Lanfrediella amphicirrus gen. nov. sp. nov. Nematotaeniidae (Cestoda: Cyclophyllidea), a tapeworm parasite of Rhinella marina (Linnaeus, 1758) (Amphibia: Bufonidae)

Abstract

The family Nematotaeniidae, tapeworms commonly found in the small intestines of amphibians and reptiles, includes 27 recognised species distributed among four genera: Bitegmen Jones, Cylindrotaenia Jewell, Distoichometra Dickey and Nematotaenia Lühe. The taxonomy of these cestodes is poorly defined, due in part to the difficulties of observing many anatomical traits. This study presents and describes a new genus and species of nematotaeniid parasite found in cane toads (Rhinella marina) from eastern Brazilian Amazonia. The cestodes were collected during the necropsy of 20 hosts captured in the urban area of Belém, Pará. The specimens were fixed and processed for light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction. Samples were also collected for molecular analyses. The specimens presented a cylindrical body, two testes and paruterine organs. However, they could not be allocated to any of the four existing nematotaeniid genera due to the presence of two each of dorsal compact medullary testes, cirri, cirrus pouches, genital pores, ovaries and vitelline glands per mature segment. Lanfrediella amphicirrus gen. nov. sp. nov. is the first nematotaeniid studied using Historesin analysis, SEM and 3D reconstruction, and it is the second taxon for which molecular data have been deposited in GenBank

A new species of Kentropyxia Baker, 1982 parasitic in the small intestine of Osteocephalus taurinus Steindachner (Anura: Hylidae) from the Brazilian Eastern Amazon

“…Recently, SEM has been used to study parasites of Amazon amphibians (Santos et al, 2008;Santos et al, 2011;Melo et al, 2011;Nascimento et al, 2013;Silva et al, 2013;Gomes et al, 2013) and has proven its importance in adding new morphological data and confirmation of surface details that can be difficult to visualised by light microscopy.…”

Human Bertielliasis in Amazonia: Case Report and Challenging Diagnosis

“…One of the fragments of the strobilus stored in saline solution was used for the molecular analysis of the 18S fragment of the ribosomal DNA, based on the protocol previously described [1]. The sequences obtained were edited manually and mixed using BioEdit [2] (GenBank accession number JN131919), and aligned with other 18S sequences of anoplocephalids available in GenBank using Mega 5 [3].…”

Morphological characterization of Eustrongylides sp. larvae (Nematoda, Dioctophymatoidea) parasite of Rhinella marina (Amphibia: Bufonidae) from Eastern Amazonia

“…In the last six years, new taxa have been reported from this host (SANTOS et al, 2008(SANTOS et al, , 2011MELO et al, 2011;GOMES et al 2013) together with the first report of Ortleppascaris (SILVA et al, 2013a, b). This study adds yet another component to this helminth fauna, for the first time describing morphological aspects of second-stage larvae of Eustrongylides in R. marina from the Marajó Archipelago, Eastern Amazonia.…”