Helminth Infection of the Loggerhead Sea Turtle Caretta caretta along the Coasts of Sicily and the North West Adriatic Sea

Abstract

We provide new data on the presence of helminth parasites in 64 individual loggerhead sea turtles Caretta caretta stranded along the coasts of Sicily and the northwest Adriatic Sea between June 2014 and August 2016. The necropsy examination revealed 31 individuals (48.4%) positive for endoparasites, showing a greater prevalence of trematodes than nematodes. In particular, seven species and a single genus of Trematoda (Hapalotrema) and a single species and genus of Nematoda (Kathlania) were identified. Among the Digenea flukes the species with the highest prevalence of infection were Rhytidodes gelatinosus (34.6%) and Hapalotrema sp. (33.3%), while among the Nematoda they were Kathlania sp. (33.3%) and Sulcascaris sulcata (33.3%). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied among the recovery sites of the stranded loggerhead sea turtles and prevalence of endoparasites was used to highlight any relationship between the parasites and the origin of the hosts. ANOVA showed significant differences (p < 0.001) among the data used.

First report of Rhytidodes gelatinosus (Rudolphi, 1819) Looss, 1901 (Digenea: Rhytidodidae) in an olive-ridley Turtle Lepidochelys olivacea (Eschscholtz, 1829) from Brazil

“…Rhytidodes gelatinosus has already been reported in several parts of the world and in three of the seven species of sea turtles. Blair and Limpus (1982) Gentile et al (2021) analyzed 64 loggerhead turtles from various locations along the coast of Italy. 31 turtles had parasites.…”

“… Gentile et al . (2021) analyzed 64 loggerhead turtles from various locations along the coast of Italy.…”

An update and ecological perspective on certain sentinel helminth endoparasites within the Mediterranean Sea

“…the leatherback turtle Dermochelys coriacea, the green turtle and the loggerhead turtle) have been recorded (Casale and Margaritoulis, 2010). From this basin, S. sulcata has been reported in loggerhead sea turtles from the Adriatic (Manfredi et al, 1998;Gračan et al, 2012;Santoro et al, 2019;Marangi et al, 2020;Gentile et al, 2021) and Tyrrhenian Sea (Santoro et al, 2019), as well as from North African coastline (Sey, 1977), with prevalence varying from 18 to 33% (Supplementary Table 1; Fig. 3).…”