Abstract
Fifty-five adult Dicrocoelium rileyi Macy, 1931 parasitizing Tadarida brasiliensis (Geoffroy, 1824) from Durango, Nuevo Leon, Puebla, Zacatecas and Mexico State were morphologically described and morphometrically analyzed. To evaluate the degree of variation among populations from the five localities, 27 morphometric measures of this species were transformed into an orthogonal factor by principal component analysis (PCA), and a posterior comparison among populations was performed using discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC). Significant differences were observed with exceptions between the Puebla - Zacatecas and Nuevo Leon - Mexico State populations when forming three groups with an 88 % assignation. The Durango population was the most dissimilar population. These results show that the morphological traits of D. rileyi are variable among the populations in this study due to local intraspecific variation; however, some of the specimens present in the distinct localities may represent different species. Molecular analysis is necessary to accurately define whether the populations involved in our study constitute one or several species.
Highlights
Multivariate analysis provides statistical methods to study the joint relationships of variables in data that contain intercorrelations
The Durango population was the most dissimilar population. These results show that the morphological traits of D. rileyi are variable among the populations in this study due to local intraspecific variation; some of the specimens present in the distinct localities may represent different species
In the morphological review of the specimens of the five populations under study, there was a modification of the position of the vitelline glands since in the original description of the species, these glands are located below the equator, while in some of the specimens studied by us, some of the vitelline follicles pass over the equator
Summary
Multivariate analysis provides statistical methods to study the joint relationships of variables in data that contain intercorrelations. Dicrocoelium rileyi Macy (1931) was described from the bat Tadarida brasiliensis cynocephala (Le Conte, 1831) in Kansas and Oklahoma. This parasite has only been registered in T. brasiliensis distributed in the USA (Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida) and Mexico (Morelos, Nuevo Leon, Zacatecas, Durango and Puebla) (Guzmán-Cornejo et al 2003, Caspeta-Mandujano et al 2017). The aim of the present work was to determine the degree of morphometric variability among five populations of D. rileyi in Mexico using discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC) with a multivariate approach to determine the range of variation and to identify the diagnostic traits of the species
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