CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The pentastomes are a taxon of obligate endoparasites found into the respiratory system of terrestrial vertebrates. Within reptiles, they have been detected in snakes, lizards, turtles and crocodiles. In the respiratory tract of the definitive host, parasites must be capable of attaining sexual maturity. The objective of this work was to identify and characterize specimens of these parasites found in a wild individual of Caiman yacare from the Esteros del Iberá, an extensive wetland in the province of Corrientes, in northeastern Argentina. Six specimens of the Family Sebekidae were extracted from the lung lobes. Morphological study found that all individuals were adult sexually mature females with two pairs of retractable hooks on each side of the mouth and lots of eggs inside. The pentastomes fixed in ethanol (70 %) and mounted directly with lactophenol. Parasites were observed with Scanning Electron Microscope JEOL JSM- 35C equipped with a digital image acquisition system Sem Afore brand. For the measurement of the different specimens, TPS DIG 2 version 1.11 is used. Thanks to the scanning microscopy, we observed that the specimens do not have spines on their hooks, they have 2 teeth inside their oral cuadre. Usually, the identification of species are based of the hooks and copulatory spicules of the males, but our animals were females. Today we are working on the identification of the specimens, comparing the different reports for Sebekia in South America. Unfortunately, we only had six parasites to confirm the species by moleculars technics. The aim of the present work is to enrich our knowledge of the biology of pentastomids by analysing the specimens. This is the first report on the presence of the genus Sebekia in Caiman yacare living in Argentina, and the second for Latin America, as S. oxychepala has been previously recorded in caimans from Corumbá, in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil.