Abstract
Contracaecum rudolphii Hartwich, 1964 is a nematode which causes major concerns to human and wildlife animal’s health. However, the population genetics of C. rudolphii has been poorly studied in Iraq. In order to gain a deeper understanding in the outline of the genetic diversity of the nematode C. rudolphii that were isolated from its host cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo (Linnaeus, 1758), in the middle areas of Iraq, twenty specimens of C. rudolphii adults were isolated from nine individuals of P. carbo. The first (ITS-1) internal transcribed spacers (ITS) of ribosomal DNA (rDNA) of C. rudolphii were amplified using conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR); then, the amplicons were subjected to sequencing. Concatenation of ITS-1 (rDNA) sequences resulted in four unique genotypes that have not been previously recorded in Iraq. The present study showed that the most common genotype occurred in 85% of C. rudolphii, and in 88.9% of cormorants. Furthermore, the infrapopulation difference in the genotypes was fairly high, with an average of 1.3 ± 0.48 genotypes per host of those with ≥two nematodes. All the sequences of the current study were distributed into two different populations. The sequences of ITS-1 for the first population had the highest similarity to ITS-1 sequence of C. rudolphii B, while the sequences of ITS-1 for the second population had the highest similarity to ITS-1 sequence of C. rudolphii A. This study provides an insight about the genetic divergence of C. rudolphii among P. carbo in Iraq. As well, the results likely support the hypothesis that C. rudolphii represents a complex of at least two sibling species.
Highlights
The roundworm Contracaecum rudolphii Hartwich, 1964 (Nematoda: Anisakidae) is a parasitic intestinal nematode of the cormorants, pelicans, and ducks (Moravec, 2009)
The sequences of Contracaecum sp. isolated from fish collected from Parishan Lake, Islamic republic of Iran (Shamsi and Aghazadeh-Meshgi, 2011) and Lake Nasser, Egypt (Younis et al, 2017) were highly dispersed, and no obvious correlations of close clusters were noticed with the two populations presented in the current study
The present investigation is the first study to use a genetic approach for the characterization of C. rudolphii from nine infected cormorants in central part of Iraq
Summary
The roundworm Contracaecum rudolphii Hartwich, 1964 (Nematoda: Anisakidae) is a parasitic intestinal nematode of the cormorants, pelicans, and ducks (Moravec, 2009). The larvae of Contracaecum spp. are the causative agent of human Anisakidosis (Shamsi, 2014). Anthropogenic shifts to natural landscapes have resulted in significant increases in population densities of wildlife species in some areas (Daszak et al, 2001; Barrueto et al, 2014). Such increases in the number of wildlife species are likely to increase the occurrence of C. rudolphii and promote extra transmission of C. rudolphii between birds and fish, fish and humans (Kanarek, 2011)
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