The Occurrence of and a Sp. in Pulmonary Vessels of Hispid Cotton Rats () from Georgia, U.S.A.

During 2017-2018, a survey for the rat lungworm, (Nematoda: Metastrongyloidea), in rodents from Piedmont and Lower Coastal Plains physiographic regions of Georgia was conducted. On 4 occasions, a single worm was recovered from the pulmonary vessels of a single cotton rat (). One of these worms was identified as a sp. and the remaining 3 as a sp. by morphology. No were found. (Nematoda: Physalopteroidea) and species (Nematoda: Spiruroidea) are stomach parasites of many wild and domestic animals. This is the first report of these species in the pulmonary vessels of a definitive host. To better characterize these parasites, representative specimens were collected from cotton rat stomachs and identified morphologically and molecularly. Based on partial cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 () gene sequences, from stomachs were identical to the sp. from the pulmonary vessels. The sequences from the sp. from the stomach exhibited a higher degree of variability but confirmed that the pulmonary worms were the same species. Furthermore, sequences of from a coastal site clustered separately from a clade of sequences from cotton rats from a Piedmont site. Our data show that adult worms recovered from pulmonary vessels of cotton rats could be either or sp., indicating that these parasitic worms are not always restricted to the stomach and that worms from pulmonary vessels must be carefully examined to obtain a definitive diagnosis of infection.