Abstract
Water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) is the intermediate host for at least four species of Sarcocystis: S. fusiformis, S. buffalonis, S. levinei, and S. sinensis/S. dubeyi. Here, a new species, Sarcocystis dehongensis, is reported in 51 of 756 (6.7%) water buffaloes in China. By light microscopy, the cysts of S. dehongensis were macroscopic, up to 18.5 mm long and 95 μm in diameter; 4.9–11.9 μm villous protrusions extended beyond the sarcocyst wall. Using transmission electron microscopy, the sarcocyst wall had lancet- or leaf-like protrusions in longitudinal section, but the cross section showed that the protrusions appeared as mushroom-like in shape with a core of tightly packed microtubules, similar to “type 24.” BLAST searches revealed that S. dehongensis shared the most similarities with the 18S rDNA sequence of S. hardangeri (92.4%) and mitochondrial cox1 gene sequence of S. ovalis (81.0%), whereas no sequences in GenBank were found to be significantly similar to the ITS-1 region of S. dehongensis. A phylogenetic analysis based on 18S rDNA and mitochondrial cox1 gene sequences suggested that S. dehongensis was closely related to Sarcocystis species from cervids that employ corvids as definitive hosts.
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Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the Natural Sciences Foundation of China (grant 31460557) and Southeast Asia Biodiversity Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Science (grant Y4zk111B01). We would like to thank Dr. J. P. Dubey for his positive comments regarding the content of the paper and his suggestions dealing with the presentation of the text.
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Xinwen Chen and Tao Wen have the same contribution to this paper.
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Chen, X., Wen, T., Hu, J. et al. Sarcocystis dehongensis n. sp. (Apicomplexa: Sarcocystidae) from water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) in China. Parasitol Res 116, 2145–2150 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-017-5515-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-017-5515-x