Folia Parasitologica 65:012 (2018) | DOI: 10.14411/fp.2018.012

Haemogregarine (Apicomplexa: Adeleorina) infection in Vanderhaege's toad-headed turtle, Mesoclemmys vanderhaegei (Chelidae), from a Brazilian Neotropical savanna region

Vinícius C. Goes¹, Elizângela S. Brito², Rafael M. Valadão³, Camila O. Gutierrez¹, Amanda M. Picelli⁴, Lúcio A. Viana⁵

¹ Laboratório de Parasitologia Animal, Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande, Brazil;

² Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências Veterinárias, Faculdade de Agronomia, Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, Brazil;

³ Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade, Centro Nacional de Pesquisa e Conservação de Répteis e Anfíbios, Goiânia, Brazil;

⁴ Programa de Pós-Graduação em Zoologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Manaus, Brazil;

⁵ Departamento de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, Universidade Federal do Amapá, Macapá, Brazil

Knowledge of blood parasites in Brazilian chelonians is limited, since they have been recorded in only six species. Mesoclemmys vanderhaegei (Bour) is a freshwater turtle with a wide geographic distribution in Brazil, but there is little information about its natural history. This paper reports on a study of the prevalence and infection intensity of a haemogregarine in two subpopulations of M. vanderhaegei. The study was conducted in two areas of Cerrado in the Upper Paraguay River basin in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, between November 2010 and August 2013. Ninety-five (53%) of the 179 turtles captured were positive for haemogregarine parasites. The parasitic forms observed were two morphotypes of intraerythrocytic gametocytes. The prevalence differed between size classes, increasing significantly according to the animals' body size. There was no significant difference between prevalence and sex, or between sampling periods. The mean parasite intensity was 9 parasites/2,000 erythrocytes (0.45%) and the parasite population presented an aggregated distribution, with an aggregation index of 19 and discrepancy of 0.772. This is the first record of a hemoparasite in the freshwater turtle M. vanderhaegei.

Keywords: prevalence, parasite intensity, hemoparasite, chelonian, Cerrado

Received: August 18, 2017; Accepted: February 9, 2018; Published online: September 14, 2018  Show citation