Biodiversity of parasitic protozoa in animals raised in zoological gardens

Abstract published on the 30th Jirovec Protozoological Days, 2000:

Phylogenetic position of some trichomonad species isolated from new hosts.

I. ČEPIČKA, V. HAMPL, J. KULDA and J. FLEGR, Department of Parasitology, Charles University, 128 44 Prague, Czech Republic.

Most trichomonad species known from mammals were isolated from domestic animals and rodents. Our goal was to isolate, cultivate and phylogeneticaly characterise these organisms from other species of vertebrates (mainly kept in Zoos and by private keepers). In total, 200 specimens from 90 species of mammals, birds, lizards, amphibians and snails have been examined. 60 isolates of trichomonads and 15 isolates of retortamonads were obtained from faeces, rectum, caecum and oral cavity of 70 specimens from 40 host species. Trichomonads belonged into 7 genera: Monocercomonas (2 species), Hypotrichomonas (1 sp.), Trichomitus (3 sp.), Tritrichomonas (2 sp.), Trichomonas (2 sp.), Pentatrichomonas (1 sp.) and Tetratrichomonas (more than 10 species). The gene for 5.8S rRNA with the flanking areas ITS1 and ITS2 of 10 strains of Tetratrichomonas from different species of Bovidae, Suidae and Tayassuidae, one strain from an African elephant and two strains of Trichomitus from different lizards was amplified, cloned, sequenced and analysed using maximal parsimony and Neighbor-joining tree constructing methods. Tetratrichomonads from ruminants and an African elephant created one clade. However, they did not belong to the same species T. buttreyi (the only species known from these ruminants). Their similarities varied from 67.6% to 86.6%, while similarities between four species of the genus Trichomonas varied between 86% and 89%. Therefore these strains probably belonged to several separate species. Tetratrichomonas gallinarum formed the sister branch of this clade. Tetratrichomonas sp. from Macroclemys temnincki which was morphologically similar to T. brumpti from land turtles, was placed into one clade with T. limacis and T. prowazeki.

Published:

Conference:

Čepička I., Hampl V., Kulda J., Flegr J. (2001) Nové druhy trichomonád ze zvírat ze zoologických zahrad. 31. Jírovcovy protozoologické dny. [PowerPoint presentation] - in czech only