Fig. 70.—Eimeria stiedæ. Section through an infected villus of rabbit’s intestine. × 260.
Eimeria stiedæ is parasitic in the gut epithelium (fig. 70), liver, and epithelium of the bile ducts of rabbits, and is usually considered to be the parasite very occasionally found in man. The life-cycle resembles that of Eimeria avium in its general outlines (see fig. 69) and therefore will not be detailed in full here. The oöcysts (fig. 71) are large, elongate-oval, greenish in fresh preparations and vary in size from 24 µ to 49 µ long and 12·8 µ to 28 µ broad, the gut forms being usually smaller than those occurring in the liver, owing to the more confined space in which they are formed. Formerly, the parasites in the liver were described under the name of Coccidium oviforme, while those from the intestine were termed Coccidium perforans. This distinction has now broken down.
Fig. 71.—Eimeria stiedæ, from the liver of the rabbit, oöcysts in various stages of development. (After Leuckart.)
Fig. 72.—a, b, spores of Eimeria stiedæ (Riv.), with two sporozoites and residual bodies; c represents a free sporozoite. (After Balbiani.)