Huinaylepis, Mariaux, Jean & Georgiev, Boyko B., 2018

Mariaux, Jean & Georgiev, Boyko B., 2018, Bird cestodes from Huinay (Comau Fjord), Chilean Patagonia: several species of the family Dilepididae (Platyhelminthes, Cyclophyllidea), with the erection of two new genera, ZooKeys 797, pp. 1-18 : 3

Huinaylepis gen. n.

Type species.

Huinaylepis elegans sp. n. by original designation.

Diagnosis.

Dilepididae , Dilepidinae. Small strobila. Rostellum armed with two rows of hooks with peculiar and irregular 2-1 alternation. Rostellar pouch glandular. Suckers armed on anterior half, with largest antero-central hooks and progressively shorter ones laterally. Genital pores irregularly alternating. Genital ducts dorsal to osmoregulatory canals. Cirrus sac reaching osmoregulatory canals. Cirrus armed with strong spines. Testes in one field extending bilaterally and often also anteriorly to form circle reaching anterior proglottis margin. Ovary small. Uterus labyrinthic. Parasite of South American passerines ( Furnariidae ).

Etymology.

The genus name (feminine) derives from the name of the locality and the Latin suffix -lepis (scales).

Remarks.

Dilepidids with armed suckers, especially armed with true hooks and not merely spines, are very uncommon. The present material can only be compared with Cotylorhipis Blanchard, 1909, which is also found in South American furnariid birds. Although the general aspect of C. furnarii (Del Pont, 1906) and our specimens is similar because of the obvious sucker armament and despite an incomplete description of the former taxon [based on Del Pont (1906) as reported and completed in Blanchard (1909)], a number of characters easily separate them. Cotylorhipis specimens do not have any rostellum, their sucker armament is complete (all around the suckers circumference), and the testes never reach the anterior proglottis margin whereas our material shows an obvious armed rostellum in a large and distinctive rostellar pouch; sucker armament is restricted to the anterior half of suckers and testes are often far found anterior. Furthermore, the terminal gravid proglottides contain thousands of eggs and their length reaches up to 4-5 times their width in Cotylorhipis , while there are only a few hundreds of eggs and they are twice as long as wide in our specimens. These characters are sufficient to separate our material from Cotylorhipis and we propose to place it in the new genus Huinaylepis . It is, however, very likely that Cotylorhipis and Huinaylepis are closely related given the general appearance of their genital anatomy, presence of armed suckers, and shared host and geographical distribution.