Two new species of Cephalogonimidae Looss, 1899 (Digenea: Plagiorchioidea) from Africa (Mozambique and Guinea), including a new phylogenetic hypothesis for related plagiorchioids

Stephen S Curran; Haley R Dutton; Micah B Warren; Louis du Preez; Stephen A Bullard

doi:10.1016/j.ijppaw.2021.02.010

Two new species of Cephalogonimidae Looss, 1899 (Digenea: Plagiorchioidea) from Africa (Mozambique and Guinea), including a new phylogenetic hypothesis for related plagiorchioids

Int J Parasitol Parasites Wildl. 2021 Mar 9:14:228-240. doi: 10.1016/j.ijppaw.2021.02.010. eCollection 2021 Apr.

Authors

Stephen S Curran¹, Haley R Dutton¹, Micah B Warren¹, Louis du Preez^{2

3}, Stephen A Bullard¹

Affiliations

¹ Aquatic Parasitology Laboratory and Southeastern Cooperative Fish Parasite and Disease Project, School of Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 36849, USA.
² Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management, North-West, University, Potchefstroom Campus, Private Bag X6001, Potchefstroom, 20520, South Africa.
³ South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, Private Bag 1015, Makhanda, 6140, South Africa.

Abstract

Two new species of Cephalogonimidae Looss, 1899 (from Emoleptalea Looss, 1900 and Masenia Chatterji, 1933) are described from African freshwater fishes. Emoleptalea mozambiquensis n. sp. infected the turquoise killifish, Nothobranchius furzeri Jubb, in Mozambique and differs from its nine congeners by the combination of differences in body shape and size, oral sucker shape, sucker width ratio, configuration of the digestive tract and gonads, vitelline follicle shape and vitellarium configuration. Emoleptalea dollfusi Srivastava, 1960 is a synonym of Emoleptalea loossi Srivastava, 1960, thus there are still nine accepted species. Masenia baroensis n. sp. infected the globe fish, Tetraodon lineatus L., in the Republic of Guinea and differs from its five African congeners and 15 Asian congeners by the combination of circumoral spine count, oral sucker shape, caecal extent, ovary shape, genital pore position, and configuration of the vitellarium. Masenia dayali (Gupta & Puri, 1984) Chandra & Saxena, 2016 and Masenia pushpanjalii are nomina dubia. We propose Masenia ritai (Agrawal, 1964) n. comb., with M. ritai Sircar & Sinha, 1970 its junior synonym. Heterorchis cf. crumenifer (identified tentatively due to egg size) is reported from the West African lungfish, Protopterus annectens (Owen), in Mozambique (new geographical record). Heterorchis protopteri Thomas, 1958 and Heterorchis ghanensis Thomas, 1968 are species inquirendae. Sequences (28S rDNA) from these parasites were included in a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis with 37 other ingroup taxa. Both new species formed a clade with Masenia nkomatiensis Dumbo, Dos Santos & Avenant-Oldewage, 2019 from Africa. These three species formed a sister relationship with the other available cephalogonimids: Cephalogonimus americanus Stafford, 1902 and Cephalogonimus retusus (Dujardin, 1845), both frog parasites from North America and Europe, respectively. Heterorchis cf. crumenifer represented a distinct lineage within the Plagiorchioidea but formed a polytomy with species from 10 plagiorchioid families.

Keywords: Emoleptalea mozambiquensis; Ethiopian region; Heterorchis crumenifer; Masenia baroensis; Nothobranchius furzeri; Phylogeny; Protopterus annectens; Tetraodon lineatus.