Helminth Infection of the Loggerhead Sea Turtle along the Coasts of Sicily and the North West Adriatic Sea.

We provide new data on the presence of helminth parasites in 64 individual loggerhead sea turtles stranded along the coasts of Sicily and the northwest Adriatic Sea between June 2014 and August 2016. The necropsy examination revealed 31 individuals (48.4%) positive for endoparasites, showing a greater prevalence of trematodes than nematodes. In particular, seven species and a single genus of Trematoda () and a single species and genus of Nematoda () were identified. Among the Digenea flukes the species with the highest prevalence of infection were (34.6%) and sp. (33.3%), while among the Nematoda they were sp. (33.3%) and (33.3%). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied among the recovery sites of the stranded loggerhead sea turtles and prevalence of endoparasites was used to highlight any relationship between the parasites and the origin of the hosts. ANOVA showed significant differences ( < 0.001) among the data used.