Lophosicyadiplostomum, Dubois, 1936

Aguiar, Aline, Morais, Drausio Honorio, Firmino Silva, Lidiane A., Anjos, Luciano Alves Dos, Foster, Ottilie Carolina & Silva, Reinaldo José Da, 2021, Biodiversity of anuran endoparasites from a transitional area between the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado biomes in Brazil: new records and remarks, Zootaxa 4948 (1), pp. 1-41 : 18

Lophosicyadiplostomum aff. nephrocystis ( Lutz, 1928) Dubois, 1937

Hosts (prevalence; range): D. minutus (19/37; 1–163), E. bicolor (2/40; 4–5), B. raniceps (17/79; 1–342), L. chaquensis (5/143; 1–189), L. fuscus (1/50; 26), L. latrans (1/20; 102), L. podicipinus (9/225; 1–225), P. azureus (30/47; 1–365), P. albonotatus (1/23; 2), P. centralis (2/35; 4–5), P. mystacalis (1/59; 8), S. cf. ruber (2/5; 3–11), S. fuscovarius (10/51; 1–393), and T. typhonius (2/16; 18–63).

Site of infection: kidneys.

Stage: metacercaria unencysted.

Type host and type locality: “gavilan bermejo”, Venezuela .

Comments: the adult parasite has been found in the intestine of birds such as Pitangus sulphuratus (Linnaeus) from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ( Vicente et al. 1983). Little is known about this genus comprising only this species and Lophosicyadiplostomum rizwanae Channa, Khan, Shaikh, & Unar described in the bird Ardeola grayii (Sykes) from Pakistan ( Channa et al. 2011). Our specimens are similar to the morphological description by Hamann & González (2009) which were reported in tadpoles from Argentina. They are very small (around 540 µm) and present body typically bipartite with an oval forebody and fusiform hindbody; the small ventral sucker is anterior to the circular holdfast organ. Considering the immature stage and the little understanding of these parasites, other tools such as SEM and molecular analyses are needed to describe these metacercariae. There are some records such as Lophosicyadiplostomum sp. (metacercaria unencysted) in kidneys of frogs from Brazil ( Lins et al. 2017) and Argentina ( Hamann & Kehr 1999; Hamann & González 2009) and in intestines of the fish Channa straita (Bloch) from Northeast India ( Athokpam & Tandon 2015). The 15 species of anurans mentioned above in the present study constitute new records for the metacercaria of L. aff. nephrocystis.