Cosmocerca parva Travassos, 1925

Aguiar, Aline, Morais, Drausio Honorio, Firmino Silva, Lidiane A., Anjos, Luciano Alves Dos, Foster, Ottilie Carolina & Silva, Reinaldo José Da, 2021, Biodiversity of anuran endoparasites from a transitional area between the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado biomes in Brazil: new records and remarks, Zootaxa 4948 (1), pp. 1-41 : 10

Cosmocerca parva Travassos, 1925

Hosts (prevalence; range): P. azureus (3/47; 2–4).

Site of infection: large intestine.

Stage: adult.

Type host and type locality: Hylodes nasus (Lichtenstein) , Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil .

Comments: Cosmocerciids of Cosmocerca are characterized by a set of plectanes and rosette caudal papillae in the males ( Baker & Vaucher 1984; González & Hamann 2010a). Besides spicules size, other features such as the shape, number, and distribution of plectanes and papillae are important to differentiate Cosmocerca spp. ( González & Hamann 2010a). According to Bursey et al. (2015), there are 30 species of Cosmocerca being 10 from the Neotropical Region. Cosmocerca parva was described with 5 pairs of plectanes by Travassos (1925). However, subsequent studies reported a variation from 4 to 7 pairs of plectanes according to species host and the lack of sclerotized supports between plectanes ( González & Hamann 2006 2007, 2010a). Studies on the ultrastructure of the surface unveiled details of rosettes and a relatively discrete and sclerotized plectanes which is not fused to others ( González & Hamann, 2010a). In our study, the number of plectanes was five in the most of specimens, and we did not observe sclerotized supports. Several anurans from South American were recorded as hosts of C. parva (Campi„o et al. 2014, Martins-Sobrinho et al. 2017; Silva et al. 2018; Oliveira et al. 2019), including P. azureus which has already been registered from the Pantanal wetland (Campi„ o et al. 2016).