Comparative Parasitology 68(2) 2001 - Peru State College

234 COMPARATIVE PARASITOLOGY, 68(2), JULY 2001
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Copyright © 2011, The Helminthological Society of Washington
rfon cinereus (Green, 1818) from collecting sites
within a few kilometers of where R. ambystomae
sp. n. was collected as part of the present study
(J. R. Coggins, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee,
personal communication). Oddly
enough, no Rhabdias were found in A. maculaturn
collected by Bolek and Coggins (1998)
from the same area. This information suggests
that R. ambystomae sp. n. may also parasitize P.
cinereus in northern Wisconsin but cannot reach
maturity in this lungless amphibian. Further examinations
will be necessary for confirmation.
Other authors identified lung nematodes collected
from salamanders in Wisconsin and Michigan
as R. ranae (Coggins and Sajdak, 1982;
Muzzall and Schinderle, 1992). This species has
been recorded in a number of North American
anurans, most of which belong to the family
Ranidae (Baker, 1978; Yoder and Coggins,
1996; Bursey and DeWolf, 1998). In our opinion,
the determination of the material from salamanders
as R. ranae is questionable because of
the high level of host specificity demonstrated
by most representatives of Rhabdias; members
of this genus have never been found to parasitize
hosts from more than a single order (Rausch et
al., 1984). Similarly, the report by Goldberg et
al. (1998) of a frog parasite, Rhabdias joaquinensis
Ingles, 1935, from salamanders in California
may also represent a misidentification and
is in need of confirmation.
Rhabdias ambystomae sp. n. is the first species
of this genus described from North American
salamanders. The rich salamander fauna of
North America and the strict specificity of rhabdiasids
to their hosts indicate that further studies
of material from the field or museum collections
may reveal the presence of more species of
Rhabdias unique to the salamanders of the New
World.
Acknowledgments
We thank Dr. Gennadiy Atrashkevich, who
kindly provided several specimens of 5. keyserlingii
for our investigation, and Dr. Hideo Hasegawa
for the loan of R. tokyoensis. We are
grateful to Dr. Robert Wise for assistance with
SEM. Collection of amphibians in Wisconsin
was conducted under a permit provided by the
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
This research was supported by a grant from the
Vander Putten International Fund of the University
of Wisconsin Oshkosh.