Trichobilharzia spp. in natural conditions in Annecy Lake, France

Abstract

Annecy Lake is a well-known focus of human cercarial dermatitis in France. Identification of the parasites, however, was not performed in the past. Previous studies suspected two species, Trichobilharzia franki and Trichobilharzia regenti, based on the presence of parasites in mallards and/or morphological identification of snails emitting ocellate furcocercariae. Following a standardized molecular approach, we studied snails and furcocercariae and compared their haplotypes with those deposited in GenBank. The selected markers were the second internal transcribed spacer ITS-2 for the snails and ITS-2 and D2 domain of the ribosomal DNA for the parasites. Our results confirm the presence of T. franki and T. regenti and two probable new species that could be potential agents of cercarial dermatitis. All the snails emitting the ocellate furcocercariae belong to the same species identified as Radix peregra (=Radix ovata = Radix balthica). Parasite-host relationships between species of the genus Trichobilharzia and snails of the genus Radix do not seem to be as specific as supposed previously.