SPECIES RECOGNITION OF CONGENERIC ACANTHOCEPHALANS IN SLIDER TURTLES BY RANDOM AMPLIFIED POLYMORPHIC DNA (RAPD) MARKERS

Species recognition of acanthocephalans of the genus Neoechinorhynchus (Hamann, 1892) found in the freshwater turtle Trachemys scripta (Wied , 1838) has previously been based primarily on female body and egg mor phology. Observed morphological plasticity within and among species ma y lead to the misclassification of female specimens and leaves males o f different species completely indistinguishable. Here, random-amplifi ed polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis was used to genetically characteriz e samples of Neoechinorhynchus pseudemydis (Cable and Hopp, 1954), Neo echinorhynchus emydis (Leidy, 1851), and Neoechinorhynchus emyditoides (Fisher, 1960). Ampli fications performed with 3 decamer oligonucleot ides showed banding patterns with a few diagnostic fragments that allo wed the recognition of N. pseudemydis specimens from those of the N. e mydis-N. emyditoides group. No primer gave a species-specific locus th at allowed the differentiation of N. emydis from N. emyditoides specim ens, suggesting that they could belong to a sole taxon. The species as signment of females of uncertain classification and of males is fully reliable using RAPD markers. Thus, identification of acanthocephalan s pecies by RAPD in the helminth infracommunities could potentially be v ery useful to determine community structure. RAPD and other polymerase chain reaction-based methods have some practical advantages over mult ilocus discriminant analysis, such as the ability to use ethanol-store d specimens and small tissue samples of parasites.