Superfamily Bivesiculoidea Yamaguti, 1934

Abstract

The family Bivesiculidae is comprised of a small group of digeneans that are parasitic in the digestive tract of marine fishes. Members of this family are characterized by the small body size, the lack of suckers, the reduced vitellarium, the fairly large eggs and the V-shaped excretory bladder. Molecular studies by Blair et al. (1998) revealed no close relationship between this family and any other digenean family and the molecular studies of Olson et al. (2003), and Littlewood et al. (2015) indicated that it is the most basally derived family in the Plagiorchiida.