The Mediterranean Mussel () as Intermediate Host for the Anisakid (Nematoda), a Pathogen Parasite of the Mediterranean Loggerhead Turtle ().

(Anisakidae), a pathogenic nematode of sea turtles, may cause ulcerous gastritis with different degrees of severity. Previous studies demonstrated a high prevalence of infection in the Mediterranean loggerhead turtle (), although no data on the potential intermediate hosts of this nematode has been published thus far from the Mediterranean basin. Here, using molecular analyses, we demonstrated that the cross sections of nematode larvae observed histologically in Mediterranean mussels () collected from a farm along the Tyrrhenian coast of southern Italy belong to . The BLAST analysis of sequences at the ITS2 region of rDNA and mtDNA gene loci here obtained from samples of two Mediterranean mussels containing nematode larvae showed 100% homology with those at the same gene loci from the adults of collected from the Mediterranean Sea and deposited in GenBank. To our knowledge, this study is the first to present data on a potential intermediate host of in the Mediterranean basin and to report a nematode parasite from the Mediterranean mussel.