Ophiotaenia echidis n. sp. (Cestoda: Proteocephalidae) from the saw-scaled viper, Echis carinatus sochureki Stemmler (Ophidia: Viperidae), one of the world's deadliest snakes, from the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Ophiotaenia echidis n. sp. (Cestoda: Proteocephalidae) is described from the intestine of one of the world's deadliest snakes, the saw-scaled viper Echis carinatus sochureki Stemmler (Ophidia: Viperidae) in the United Arab Emirates. The new species differs from other species of the non-monophyletic Ophiotaenia by the position of testes in two longitudinal lines on both sides of the uterus, and by the large size of an embryophore (diameter of 44–55 μm versus less than 40 μm in other species). Phylogenetic reconstructions based on lsr DNA and concatenated lsr DNA + COI datasets place the new species among proteocephalids from unrelated zoogeographical realms but mostly infecting venomous snakes. In all analyses, O . echidis n. sp. exhibited a strongly supported sister relationship with O. lapata Rambeloson, Ranaivoson et de Chambrier, 2012, a parasite of a pseudoxyrhophiid snake endemic to Madagascar. Despite a shared close evolutionary history between these taxa, morphological synapomorphies remain unclear, which impedes the erection of a new genus to accommodate them. A list of the 71 tapeworms of the former, non-monophyletic subfamily Proteocephalinae, parasitising snakes and lizards, including species inquirendae , and the phylogenetically closely related Thaumasioscolex didelphidis from opossum, with selected characteristics, is also provided, together with a checklist of helminth parasites reported from E. carinatus .

Description of the first species of Pseudoendorchis (Cestoda: Proteocephalidae) with uniloculate suckers from the pimelodid catfish Megalonema platycephalum, with comments on the taxonomic importance of the terminal vagina

“…5). In the Proteocephalidae, the morphology of the pars copulatrix vaginae, including the presence or absence of a vaginal sphincter, has been used as a discriminant character at the species level (Scholz & Hanzelova ´, 1998;Scholz et al, 2019;de Chambrier et al, 2021).…”