Closing the knowledge gap: Helminth parasites of freshwater turtles from the Chaco-Pampa Plain, Southern South America

Abstract

Six species of freshwater turtles dominate the Chaco-Pampa Plain in southern South America andtheir parasites have been relatively understudied, with most records concentrated in Brazil.Particularly in Argentina, there are only scattered records of parasites for most of the turtles thatinhabit the region, leaving a large knowledge gap. The purpose of the present contribution is toincrease the knowledge of the internal parasites of six species of freshwater turtles from Argentina,after 15 years of fieldwork, by providing new hosts and additional geographic records for manyhost-parasite relationships. Some molecular sequences of the studied parasites were provided as atool for better species identification. We processed 433 stomach and fecal samples from liveindividuals and visceral and soft tissue samples from 54 dissected turtles collected from a widerange and different ecoregions. We found 6230 helminths belonging to 18 taxa (one cestode,11 digeneans and six nematodes). Fourteen new parasite-host associations are reported here, andfor the first time parasites are recorded for Phrynops williamsi. This work contributes significantlyto the knowledge of the parasitofauna in freshwater turtles in Argentina, providing a detailed listof parasites present in each turtle species and reporting molecular characters for future studies.