RESEARCH ARTICLE
Redescription of Monticellius indicum Mehra, 1939 (Digenea: Spirorchiidae) from the Heart of Green Sea Turtles (Chelonia mydas) in Costa Rica
Mario Santoro*, 1, Ellis C. Greiner2, Juan Alberto Morales1, Beatriz Rodríguez-Ortíz3
1 Departamento de Patología, Escuela de Medicina Veterinaria, Universidad Nacional, PO Box 86, Heredia 3000, Costa Rica
2 Department of Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611
3 Laboratorio de Helminthología, Facultad de Microbiología, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 3
First Page: 4
Last Page: 8
Publisher ID: TOPARAJ-3-4
DOI: 10.2174/1874421400903010004
Article History:
Received Date: 25/11/2008Revision Received Date: 20/2/2009
Acceptance Date: 25/2/2009
Electronic publication date: 7/4/2009
Collection year: 2009
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Monticellius indicum Mehra, 1939, is redescribed from the heart of green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) at Tortuguero National Park, Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Of the 40 green turtles examined, only 5 (12.5%) were infected with a mean intensity of 1.6. Our specimens are consistent with the original description based on a single fluke from the heart of the same host species in the Arabian Sea, Pakistan, but our redescription provides an unreported range of variation while adding new information about acetabulum structure and egg morphology.
