Isospora machadoae, de Pinho & da Silva & Rodrigues & Lopes & Oliveira & Luz & Ferreira & Lopes & Berto, 2018

de Pinho, Irlane F., da Silva, Lidiane M., Rodrigues, Mariana B., Lopes, Bruno do B., Oliveira, Mariana S., Luz, Hermes R., Ferreira, Ildemar, Lopes, Carlos Wilson G. & Berto, Bruno P., 2018, Isospora machadoae sp. nov. (Protozoa: Apicomplexa: Eimeriidae), a new coccidian species from white-necked thrushes Turdus albicolis (Passeriformes: Turdidae) of South America, Zoologia (e 24570) 35, pp. 1-4 : 2-3

Isospora machadoae sp. nov.

http://zoobank.org/ 1F9B7A3F-100D-45CE-8162-7E534A9DAAE5

Figs 1, 2

Diagnosis. Among all coccidian species recorded from Turdidae in the New World, only I. machadoae sp. nov. has an oocyst wall rough with micropyle and micropyle cap, which are very uncommon characteristic features in Isospora spp. from Passeriformes ( Table 1). In addition, I. machadoae sp. nov. differed from others in having ellipsoidal sporocysts with Stieda body flattened to half-moon-shaped.

Description. Oocyst (n = 35) spherical to sub-spherical, 21–24 × 20–23 (22.2 × 21.2); length/width (L/W) ratio 1.0–1.2 (1.1). Wall bi-layered, 1.2–1.5 (1.3) thick, outer layer rough, with 2/3 of total thickness. Micropyle present with 7.0 wide. Micropyle cap present with slight protrusion, but barely discernible in some oocysts ( Figs 1, 2). Oocyst residuum absent, but one or two sub-spherical, robust and refringent polar granules are present. Sporocysts (n = 26) 2, ellipsoidal, 12-14 × 9–11 (13.3 × 9.7); L/W ratio 1.2–1.5 (1.4). Stieda body present, flattened to half-moon-shaped, 0.5 high × 1.5 wide; sub-Stieda present, rounded, 1.5 high × 2.5 wide; para-Stieda body absent; sporocyst residuum present, composed of scattered spherules of different sizes. Sporozoites 4, vermiform, with a posterior refractile body and a nucleus.

Type host. White-necked thrush Turdus albicollis Vieillot, 1818 ( Aves: Passeriformes : Turdidae ).

Type material. Phototypes , line drawing, half of the oocysts in 10 % aqueous buffered formalin (v/v) and the other half in 70 % ethanol are deposited at the Museu de Zoologia da Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, under accession number MZURPTZ2017001. Phototypes and line drawings are also deposited and available (http://r1.ufrrj.br/labicoc/ colecao.html) in the Parasitology Collection of the Laboratório de Biologia de Coccídios, at UFRRJ, under repository number P-70/2016. Photographs of the type-host specimen (symbiotype) are deposited in the same collection .

Type locality. Parque Nacional do Itatiaia (22°27’38”S, 44°35’34”W), Southeastern Brazil .

Other locality. Visconde de Mauá (22 °19 ’46”S, 44°32’11”W), Southeastern Brazil .

Etymology. The specific name is derived from the family name of a Brazilian parasitologist Dr Rosangela Zacarias Machado, given in her honor for her contribution to the study of Protozoa.

Remarks. According to Duszynski and Wilber (1997) and Berto et al. (2011), a coccidian species should be compared in detail with coccidian species that are feature-similar and belong to the same host family. The Turdidae is one of the families of Passeriformes with many descriptions of coccidian parasites, mainly considered the flycatchers, robins and nightingales classified in the past as turdids. Currently, from the New World, only the six species cited in Table 1 are recorded from Turdidae ( Berto et al. 2011, Cardozo et al. 2015). The white-necked thrushes captured in the current work had no apparent clinical signs of coccidiosis or high densities of oocysts in feces. This condition may be associated with a specific low pathogenicity of I. machadoae sp. nov. and/or with the good conservation status of the Parque Nacional do Itatiaia and Visconde de Mauá, which ensures the ecological niches and thus the immunocompetence to wildlife ( Dorrestein 2009, Berto and Lopes 2013).