Immature developmental stages of schistosomes are found in molluscs and adults occur in vertebrates.

He wrote two letters to his former teacher Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold in May and August 1851 describing his findings.

Bilhart's wrote a paper in 1856 describing the worms more fully and he named them Distoma haematobium.

Their unusual morphology meant that they could not be comfortably included in Distoma so in 1856 Meckel von Helmsback created the genus Bilharzia for them.

Despite Bilharzia having precedence the genus name Schistosoma was officially adopted by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

The lower body temperature of poikilotherms is accompanied by a seasonal nature of the immune response in these hosts resulting in a quantitatively reduced pathogenesis.

Hosts that did succumb to the infection would most likely die in water where eggs could be released by predation, scavengers, or decomposition and develop successfully.

Phylogenetic analysis shows that the genus Griphobilharzia rather than being a basal schistosome is a relation of the spirorchiids that infect freshwater turtles.

The ancestral species infected freshwater turtles and the life cycle included gastropod hosts.

In the Gigantobilharziinae the ventral sucker is absent and the female genital pore is medial near the anterior end of the body.

Heterobilharzia and Schistomatium form a separate clade indicating that adaption to mammalian hosts has occurred at least twice.

This genus was originally grouped with the schistosoma on the basis of the existence of two sexes and other morphological features.