Strix seloputo Horsefield

Paperna, Ilan, Keong, Malcolm Soh Chu & May, Charlotte Yap Aye, 2008, Haemosporozoan Parasites Found In Birds In Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Sarawak And Java, Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 56 (2), pp. 211-243 : 237

Strix seloputo Horsefield

Locality. – Singapore: 2003 (Owl 3).

Type host. – Strix aluco ( Germany) .

Remarks. – Descriptions of Bishop & Bennett (1989) and Valkiunas [1997 (2005)] were made from neotypes, not from conspecific hosts and from different geographical locations. Although infections in S. seloputo and in part in N. scutulata were comprised of premature gametocytes, they conformed in shape with the past descriptions. The one gravid microgametocyte found, embraces the nucleus and is loaded with volutin.

The parasites vary in their displacement impact on the host-cell nucleus (NDR ranging from 0.34 to 0.91), but the computed means conform earlier reported (NDR 0.6 vs. 0.6). A striking difference between H. syrnii and H. noctuae recovered in our material, and not emphasized earlier, is the greater concentration of pigment granules in the former. Granules (numbering 20-30) are of variable sizes but some look coarser than those from H. noctuae , and many gametocytes also contained variable amounts of aggregated volutin. This difference is also evident from material in our collection from other species of owls from Europe (Brumpt collection, Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, Paperna, unpub. data).