Helminths of the Lizard Salvator merianae (Squamata, Teiidae) in the Caatinga, Northeastern Brazil.

A A M Teixeira,J A Araujo-Filho,S C Ribeiro,A M A Pereira,V F Lima,W O Almeida,D A Teles,S V Brito

doi:10.1590/1519-6984.13515

Abstract

The lizard Salvator merianae is a widely distributed species in South America, occurring from southern Amazonia to the eastern Andes and northern Patagonia. Studies on the parasitic fauna of this lizard have revealed that it is a host for helminths in various Brazilian biomes. The present work provides new parasitological data on the gastrointestinal nematodes associated with the lizard S. merianae. Sixteen specimens were analyzed from nine different locations in a semi-arid region in northeastern Brazil. Five species of nematodes were identified. Oswaldofilaria petersi was first recorded as a parasite of the S. merianae, thus increasing the knowledge of the fauna of parasites that infect large Neotropical lizards.

Highlights

The lizard Salvator merianae (Dumeril and Bibron, 1839) is a widely distributed species in South America (Ávila-Pires, 1995), occurring from southern Amazonia to the eastern Andes and northern Patagonia (Fitzgerald et al, 1999)
The species has been introduced by humans in the Parque Nacional de Fernando de Noronha, Brazil (Homewood, 1995) and central-west Florida, USA (Mazzotti et al, 2014)
The aim of the present work was to enrich the existing knowledge about helminth parasites associated with S. merianae in northeastern Brazil by analyzing specimens of Caatinga, northeastern Brazil

Summary

Introduction

The lizard Salvator merianae (Dumeril and Bibron, 1839) is a widely distributed species in South America (Ávila-Pires, 1995), occurring from southern Amazonia to the eastern Andes and northern Patagonia (Fitzgerald et al, 1999). The species has been introduced by humans in the Parque Nacional de Fernando de Noronha, Brazil (Homewood, 1995) and central-west Florida, USA (Mazzotti et al, 2014). It has an omnivorous diet consisting of arthropods, mostly the orders Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Orthoptera and Araneae (Kiefer and Sazima, 2002), small vertebrates, birds, rodents, amphibians, lizards, turtles eggs (Presch, 1973; Sazima and Haddad, 1992), and fruits of. The ingestion of the fruits acts as a seed dispersal mechanism (Castro and Galetti, 2004)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion