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Background  Within the African monitor lizard family Varanidae, two haemogregarine genera have been reported. These comprise five species of  Hepatozoon  Miller, 1908 and a species of  Haemogregarina  Danilewsky, 1885. Even though other haemogregarine genera such as  Hemolivia  Petit, Landau, Baccam & Lainson, 1990 and  Karyolysus  Labbé, 1894 have been reported parasitising other lizard families, these have not been found infecting the Varanidae. The genus  Karyolysus  has to date been formally described and named only from lizards of the family Lacertidae and to the authors’ knowledge, this includes only nine species. Molecular characterisation using fragments of the 18S gene has only recently been completed for but two of these species. To date, three  Hepatozoon  species are known from southern African varanids, one of these  Hepatozoon paradoxa  (Dias, 1954) shares morphological characteristics alike to species of the family Karyolysidae. Thus, this study aimed to morphologically redescribe and characterise  H. paradoxa  molecularly, so as to determine its taxonomic placement.    Methods  Specimens of  Varanus albigularis albigularis  Daudin, 1802 (Rock monitor) and  Varanus niloticus  (Linnaeus in Hasselquist, 1762) (Nile monitor) were collected from the Ndumo Game Reserve, South Africa. Upon capture animals were examined for haematophagous arthropods. Blood was collected, thin blood smears prepared, stained with Giemsa, screened and micrographs of parasites captured. Haemogregarine morphometric data were compared with the data for named haemogregarines of African varanids. Primer set HepF300 and HepR900 was employed to target a fragment of the 18S rRNA gene and resulting sequences compared with other known haemogregarine sequences selected from the GenBank database.    Results   Hepatozoon paradoxa  was identified infecting two out of eight (25 %)  V. a. albigularis  and a single (100 %)  V. niloticus  examined. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that  H. paradoxa  clustered with the ‘ Karyolysus ’ clade, and not with those of reptilian  Hepatozoon  spp.    Conclusions  In addition to this being the first morphological and molecular characterisation of a haemogregarine within the African Varanidae, it is the first report of a species of  Karyolysus  infecting the monitor lizard family. Furthermore, this constitutes now only the third described and named  Karyolysus  species for which there is a nucleotide sequence available.

parasites and vectors

Redescription, molecular characterisation and taxonomic re-evaluation of a unique African monitor lizard haemogregarine Karyolysus paradoxa (Dias, 1954) n. comb. (Karyolysidae)