Nematoda ofKinosternon scorpioides(Testudines: Kinosternidae) from Northeastern Brazil

Abstract

The scorpion mud turtle (Kinosternon scorpioides) is a small freshwater turtle broadly distributed in South America and commonly consumed in some Brazilian regions. This study aimed to identify the species of helminths that parasitize the digestive tract of K. scorpioides and report infection parameters such as parasite prevalence, mean intensity of the infection, abundance, and the relationship between these nematodes and host body size in this species. We captured 20 adult male K. scorpioides, and 6 animals had nematodes in their gastrointestinal tract. These animals had Serpinema magathi (prevalence = 0.3) and Spiroxys figueiredoi (prevalence = 0.25). There were no correlations between the number of total parasites and carapace length (rs = 0.17, n = 6, P = 0.74) or the length of the gastrointestinal tract (rs = 0.18, n = 6, P = 0.73).

Neotropical Turtle Blood Flukes: Two New Genera and Species from the Amazon River Basin with a Key to Genera and Comments on a Marine-Derived Parasite Lineage in South America

“…The South American pleurodires remain especially undersampled for parasites. Recent parasitological surveys focused on ectoparasites and gastro-intestinal helminths have highlighted this gap in knowledge and have begun addressing it (e.g., Mascarenhas et al, 2013Mascarenhas et al, , 2016Fernandes and Kohn, 2014;Viana et al, 2016;Du Preez et al, 2017;Correa et al, 2018;Pereira et al, 2018). In contrast, and perhaps owing to the difficulty in extracting taxonomically useful specimens from turtle blood, the blood parasites of freshwater turtles in South America remain unsampled.…”

Checklist of parasites associated with ʻreptiles’ in Northeast Brazil

“…References: (1) Vicente et al (1993); (2) Viana et al (2016); (3) Pereira et al (2018); (4) Fonseca et al (2021)…”

Helminth community dynamics in a population of Pseudopaludicola pocoto (Leptodactylidae: Leiuperinae) from Northeast-Brazilian

“…The genus Spiroxys is widely distributed throughout the Eurasian Palearctic, North Africa, North America and Neotropical countries (Hasegawa et al, 1998; Mascarenhas & Muller, 2015). Two species of the genus are found in Brazil, Spiroxys contortus Rudolphi 1819, described for the South and Southeast and Spiroxys figueiredoi Freitas and Dobbin 1962, with records for the North-Northeast, Southeast and Central-West regions infecting species of chelonians and snakes (Vicente et al, 1993; Bernadon et al, 2013; Mascarenhas and Muller, 2015 and Viana et al, 2016). Species of the genus Spiroxys are currently divided into three groups: (a) characterized by the presence of teeth in each lobe of the pseudolabium, (b) with teeth only in the median lobe and finally Roca and García, 2008 proposed a third group (c) that are without teeth, found in the Eastern, Australian and Ethiopian zoogeographic regions (Purwaningsih, 2015).…”