Abstract
The European beaver (Castor fiber) was a fully eradicated species in Slovakia. Thanks to year-round protection and several different reintroduction programs the population is now increasing. However, there are limited reports about their health status.
A 2-year-old female European beaver, was found dead by road near town Hanušovce nad Topľou in eastern Slovakia in 2021. Necropsy was carried out at the Department of Breeding and Diseases of the Game, Fish and Bees, Ecology and Cynology, University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy in Košice. Necropsy revealed a total of 13 trematodes, collected from the caecum and colon. Based on morphological and molecular analysis digenean trematode Stichorchis subtriquetrus (Rudolphi, 1814) was identified. This is the first record of adult helminth Stichorchis subtriquetrus in beaver in Slovakia.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The datasets in this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
References
Baláž I, Hreško J (2008) The new locality of the european Beaver occurrence in floodplain forest in Eastern Slovakia. Phytopedon Bratislava 7(2):171–174
Benovics M, Reslová N, Škorpíková L, Seidlová L, Mikulka O (2022) Helminth fauna of the eurasian beaver in the Czech Republic with remarks on the genetic diversity of specialist Stichorchis subtriquetrus (Digenea: Cladorchiidae). Parasitol Res 121(2):633–644. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-021-07379-2
BLAST : Basic Local Alignment Search Tool. Available online: https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Bowles J, McManus DP (1993) Rapid discrimination of Echinococcus species and strains using a polymerase chain reaction-based RFLP method. Mol Biochem Parasitol 57(93):231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0166
Bystrianska J, Papajová I, Šmiga Ľ, Šoltys J, Majláthová V, Majláth I, Gomboš F, Kleban J (2021) First report on parasites of european beavers in the Slovak Republic. Parasitol Res 120(1):355–358. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-020-06943-6
Ćirović D, Pavlović I, Ivetić V, Milenković M, Radović I, Savić B (2009) Reintroduction of the european beaver (Castor fiber L.) into Serbia and return of its parasite: the case of Stichorchis subtriquetrus. Arch Biol Sci Belgrade 61:141–114. https://doi.org/10.2298/ABS0901141C
Demiaszkiewicz AW, Lachowicz J, Kuligowska I, Pyziel AM, Bełżecki G, Miltko R, Kowalik B, Gogola W, Giżejewski Z (2014) Endoparasites of the european beaver (Castor fiber L. 1758) in northeastern Poland. Bull Vet Inst Pulawy 58:223–227. https://doi.org/10.2478/bvip-2014-0033
Drózdż J, Demiaszkiewicz AW, Lachowicz J (2004) Endoparasites of the beaver Castor fiber (L.) in northeast Poland. Helminthologia 41:99–101
Flowers JR (1996) Three amphistome cercariae (Paramphistomidae) from North Carolina.Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society,80–86. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24335581
Hajmeer MN, Cliver DO (2002) Microbiology of food preservation and sanitation. Foodborne diseases (Ed. 2):331–352
Koubková B, Baruš V, Koubek P (2002) Stichorchis subtriquetrus (Digenea: Cladorchidae) - back to the fauna of the Czech Republic after 200 years. Helminthologia 39:155–158
Kumar S, Stecher G, Tamura K (2016) MEGA7: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis version 7.0 for more extensive datasets. Mol. Biol Evol 33:1870–1874
Máca O, Pavlásek I, Vorel A (2015) Stichorchis subtriquetrus (Digenea: Paramphistomatidae) from eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) in the Czech Republic. Parasitol Res 114:2933–2939. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-015-4495-y
Miura O, Kuris AM, Torchin ME, Hechinger RF, Dunham EJ, Chiba S (2005) Molecular-genetic analyses reveal cryptic species of trematodes in the intertidal gastropod, Batillaria cumingi (Crosse). Int J Parasitol 35(7):793–801. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpara.2005.02.014
Sager H, Konjević D, Grubešić M, Janicki Z, Severin S, Beck R (2005) Stichorchis subtriquetrus in european beaver from Croatia: first report. Eur J Wildl Res 51:63–64
Szekeres S, Czabán D, Takács N, Széll Z, Gubányi A, Kontschán J, Hornok S, Sréter T (2022) First report of molecular taxonomic analyses of european beaver metazoan parasites from Hungary. Parasitol Res 121:1895–1902. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-022-07547-y
Vengušt G, Bidovec A, Vergles Rataj A, Žele D (2009) Stichorchis subtriquetrus in two beavers (Castor fiber) from Slovenia. Helminthologia 46:59–61. https://doi.org/10.2478/s11687-009-0011-1
Wróbel M (2020) Population of eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) in Europe. Glob Ecol Conserv. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01046
Acknowledgements
Thank to Laboratory of Ichthyoparasitology of Institute of Parasitology Slovak Academy of Science.
Funding
This work was supported by the scientific Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic, by support from the Slovak Academy of Sciences, VEGA no. 2/0138/21. Work was also supported by KEGA project No. 015UVLF-4/2020.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Conceptualization – JL, ĽŠ, JŠ; methodology – JL, JŠ, JČ, PL; formal analysis – JL, ĽŠ, JŠ; investigation – JL, ĽŠ, PL; resources - JČ; data duration - JL, ĽŠ, JŠ; original draft preparation - JL, ĽŠ, JŠ; review and editing - JL, ĽŠ, JŠ, PL, IP, JČ; supervision – PL, IP; project administration - IP; funding acquisition - IP. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Consent to publish
Yes.
Competing interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Ethical standards
The study reported here was conducted in compliance with the relevant local laws and regulations.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Lazár, J., Šmigová, J., Šmiga, Ľ. et al. Morphological and molecular identification of adult Stichorchis subtriquetrus in beaver in Slovakia. Vet Res Commun 47, 2161–2164 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11259-023-10074-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11259-023-10074-5