Dracunculus species

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 : 295

3. Dracunculus species in chelonians

To date, D. globocephalus is the only species reported from chelonians. The only two known hosts are the common snapping turtle ( Chelydra serpentina ) in the United States and the South American snapping turtle ( Chelydra acutirostris ) in Costa Rica. However, the report from Costa Rica was based on morphology of a single worm of unknown sex ( Bursey and Brooks, 2011).

Dracunculus globocephalus was first described by Macklin (1927) from the mesenteries and body cavity of common snapping turtles from Oklahoma and Illinois, USA. Since its first description, D. globocephalus has been re-described by two groups and detected in numerous states ( Table 1) (Williams, 1953; Gatschet and Schmidt, 1974; Moravec and Little, 2004). Morphologic features that can be used to distinguish D. globocephalus from other Dracunculus spp . are the presence of markedly uneven spicules (0.8 mm and 0.2 mm in length), the absence of a gubernaculum, and the placement of male caudal papillae ( Moravec and Little, 2004).