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Sea Turtle Parasites

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Marine Biodiversity of Costa Rica, Central America

Part of the book series: Monographiae Biologicae ((MOBI,volume 86))

In the present review we report a total of 34 species of parasites from two sea turtle species (Chelonia mydas and Lepidochelys olivacea) from Costa Rican waters. Most of the parasites were digenetic trematodes except for one annelid, the leech Ozobranchus branchiatus. Thirty-one species have been identified from the Caribbean coast and only four from the Pacific coast. O. branchiatus occurs on both sea turtle species examined from the two coastal areas. Eleven digeneans represent new geographical records for the Atlantic Ocean. Three species are reported for the first time for the Caribbean Sea. The most represented family of parasites found was Pronocephalidae with 15 species (including a new species, Pleurogonius tortugueroi). On the Caribbean coast, Tortuguero National Park was the only locality from where sea turtles (C. mydas) were examined, while three specimens of L. olivacea stranded along the Pacific coast were studied. Due to the scarcity of sea turtle parasite studies (only two of the six species of sea turtles that occur along the Costa Rican coasts have been examined so far), it is reasonable to suppose that parasite species diversity in sea turtles of Costa Rica is considerably higher than reported to date.

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  1. Departamento de Patología, Escuela de Medicina Veterinaria, Universidad Nacional, 86, Heredia, 3000, Costa Rica

    Mario Santoro

  2. Department of Public Health Sciences, Section of Parasitology, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, P.le Aldo Moro, Rome, 5 00185, Italy

    Simonetta Mattiucci

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  1. Unidad Investigación Pesquera y Acuicultura (UNIP) of the Centro de Investigación en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología (CIMAR), and Museo de Zoología, Escuela de Biología, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, 11501-2060, Costa Rica

    Ingo S. Wehrtmann

  2. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología (CIMAR), and Escuela de Biología, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, 11501-2060, Costa Rica

    Jorge Cortés

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Santoro, M., Mattiucci, S. (2009). Sea Turtle Parasites. In: Wehrtmann, I.S., Cortés, J. (eds) Marine Biodiversity of Costa Rica, Central America. Monographiae Biologicae, vol 86. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8278-8_48

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