Background The somatic musculature in trematode hermaphroditic generation (cercariae, metacercariae and adult) is presumed to comprise uniform layers of circular, longitudinal and diagonal muscle fibers of the body wall, and internal dorsoventral muscle fibers. Meanwhile, specific data are few, and there has been no analysis taking the trunk axial differentiation and regionalization into account. Yet presence of the ventral sucker (= acetabulum) morphologically divides the digenean trunk into two regions: preacetabular and postacetabular. The functional differentiation of these two regions is already evident in the nervous system organization, and the goal of our research was to investigate the somatic musculature from the same point of view. Results Somatic musculature of ten trematode species was studied with use of fluorescent-labelled phalloidin and confocal microscopy. The body wall of examined species included three main muscle layers (of circular, longitudinal and diagonal fibers), and most of the spe