Morphological and molecular identification of Sarcocystis falcatula from the emerald toucanet (Aulacorhynchus albivitta) in Colombia

Sarcocystis spp. are cyst-forming coccidia characterized by a two-host predator-prey life cycle. Sarcocysts are formed in muscles or nervous system of the intermediate host, while sporocysts develop in the small intestine of the definitive host. The intermediate hosts of Sarcocystis falcatula are wild birds. Colombia is one of the countries with the greatest biodiversity of birds, however, there are few studies related to this parasite in wild birds. This study presents the morphological and molecular detection of Sarcocystis falcatula collected from the emerald toucanet (Aulacorhynchus albivitta), a wild bird species endemic to South America. Pectoral muscle samples were obtained, and microscopic and molecular detection was performed by light microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and amplifying of the first internal transcribed spacer (ITS-1) and surface antigen-encoding genes (SAGs). Sarcocystis measured an average of 161  × 42 μm, with a cyst wall ∼0.4 μm thick. Ultrastructurally, the sarcocyst wall type 11b-like consisted of numerous villar protrusions of 850 nm wide on average. The ITS-1 sequence showed 97.0–99.7% identity to S. falcatula previously described from birds in the United States and Brazil, respectively. Concatenated phylogenetic analysis based on SAG2, SAG3 and SAG4 confirmed that the new isolate is grouped with other sequences of Sarcocystis from South America, but divergent from those isolates obtained in North America. The results of this study demonstrate for the first time the presence of S. falcatula in a wild bird from Colombia.