Helminth diversity of two anurans: Rhinella marina and Incilius valliceps (Anura: Bufonidae) from lagunas de Yalahau, Yucatán, Mexico

Abstract

Helminth communities in amphibians in Mexico have received little attention. During 2005 and 2006, we collected a total of 52 individuals of the marine toad (Rhinella marina) and 54 of the southern Gulf Coast toad (Incilius valliceps) in the Lagunas de Yalahau (Yucatán, Mexico), in order to study their helminth communities. We produced rarefaction and extrapolation sample-size-based and coverage-based curves to provide asymptotic diversity estimators based on Hill numbers to compare the communities. We calculated the first 3 Hill numbers, which are associated with estimators of species richness and species dominance. In general, all results showed that the sample size was large enough to register most of the species of parasites present in both host toad species. We found more helminth species and a higher diversity in the R. marina community than that in I. valliceps. However, extrapolation analysis showed that when a sample size of 50 individuals is reached, there are no statistical differences between the helminth communities. Our results suggest that amphibian communities in this part of the tropics follow the same pattern as described for Nearctic latitudes, equally the terrestrial habitat of the hosts is an important factor in the structure of its helminth communities.