Caryospora-Like Coccidia Infecting Green Turtles (Chelonia mydas): An Emerging Disease With Evidence of Interoceanic Dissemination.

ABSTRACT: Protozoa morphologically consistent with Caryospora sp. are one of the few pathogens associated with episodic mass mortality events involving free-ranging sea turtles. Parasitism of green turtles (Chelonia mydas) by these coccidia and associated mortality was first reported in maricultured turtles in the Caribbean during the 1970s. Years later, epizootics affecting wild green turtles in Australia occurred in 1991 and 2014. The first clinical cases of Caryospora-like infections reported elsewhere in free-ranging turtles were from the southeastern US in 2012. Following these initial individual cases in this region, we documented an epizootic and mass mortality of green turtles along the Atlantic coast of southern Florida from November 2014 through April 2015 and continued to detect additiona

SUBMITTER: Stacy BA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6817580 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature