Abstract
The Malpighian tubules of the cockroaches Archimandrita tessellata and Lucihormetica verrucosa were infected with stages of unicellular parasites. Plasmodial stages occurred freely in the lumen and attached to the epithelium of the Malpighian tubules. Vegetative plasmodia contain few or numerous nuclei, while the sporogenic plasmodia (pansporoblasts) have vegetative nuclei in their cytoplasm and in addition endogenously form uninucleate spores. New species of the genus Nephridiophaga were proposed for these two isolates. This decision was made based on the fact that they are not only found in different hosts, but are different in their morphology. For example, the size of the spores and the number of spores per sporogenic plasmodium differed. Light and electron microscopic observations show that the parasites are new members of the genus Nephridiophaga, i.e., Nephridiophaga archimandrita and Nephridiophaga lucihormetica.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Prof. Dr. Klaus Hausmann, Berlin, for helpful comments and Fred Bartlett, Schmallenberg, for linguistic correction. Mrs. Gabriele Schrader from the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) in Berlin, Germany and Mr. Roland Dusi from the fruno delica GmbH in Delitzsch, Germany were thanked for providing the cockroaches.
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Radek, R., Wellmanns, D. & Wolf, A. Two new species of Nephridiophaga (Zygomycota) in the Malpighian tubules of cockroaches. Parasitol Res 109, 473–482 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-011-2278-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-011-2278-7