Dracunculus

Cleveland, Christopher A., Garrett, Kayla B., Cozad, Rebecca A., Williams, Brianna M., Murray, Maureen H. & Yabsley, Michael J., 2018, The wild world of Guinea Worms: A review of the genus Dracunculus in wildlife, International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife 7 (3), pp. 289-300 : 290

1.2. Species of Dracunculus

The highest diversity of described Dracunculus species occurs in the Old World. To date, eight species have been described with seven occurring in snakes endemic to Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia ( Table 1). Although most Dracunculus species described are from snakes, the most widely known and studied species is D. medinensis , the human Guinea worm, which also happens to be the only Old World mammalian species ( Eberhard et al., 2014). Although D. medinensis was historically widespread in Africa and South Asia, through considerable management and eradication efforts, the total number of countries with endemic transmission in either humans or dogs has been reduced from 21 to 3 resulting in a decrease of human cases from 3.5 million in 1986 to 30 in 2017 ( Molyneux and Sankara, 2017; https://www.cartercenter. org/health/guinea_worm/case-totals.html). Numerous studies and reviews on recent developments related to this parasite have been published ( Eberhard et al., 2014; Eberhard et al., 2016a; b; Cleveland et al., 2017).

In the New World, a lower diversity of Dracunculus species has been reported, but more species have been described from mammals ( Tables 1 and 2). There are at least 2 species of Dracunculus that infect snakes ( D. ophidensis and D. braziliensis ), 1 from a snapping turtle ( D. globocephalus ), and 3 from mammals ( D. insignis , D. lutrae , and D. fuelleborni ).