Morphology and Phylogenetic Position of Two New Gregarine Species (Apicomplexa: Eugregarinorida) Parasitizing the Lubber Grasshopper Taeniopoda centurio (Drury, 1770) (Insecta: Orthoptera: Romaleidae) in Mexico

Eugregarines are understudied apicomplexan parasites of invertebrates inhabiting marine, freshwater, and terrestrial environments. Most currently known terrestrial eugregarines have been described parasitizing the gut from less than 1% of total insect diversity, with a high likelihood that the remaining insect species are infected. Eugregarine diversity in orthopterans (grasshoppers, locusts, katydids, and crickets) is still little known. We carried out a survey of the eugregarines parasitizing the Mexican lubber grasshopper, Taeniopoda centurio, an endemic species to the northwest of Mexico. We described two new eugregarine species from the gut of the host: Amoebogregarina taeniopoda n. sp. and Quadruspinospora mexicana n. sp. Both species are morphologically dissimilar in their life-cycle stages. Our SSU rDNA phylogenetic analysis showed that both species are phylogenetically distant to each other, even though they parasitize the same host. Amoebogregarina taeniopoda n. sp. clustered within the clade Gregarinoidea, being closely related to Amoebogregarina nigra from the grasshopper Melanoplus differentialis. Quadruspinospora mexicana n. sp. clustered within the clade Actinocephaloidea and grouped with Prismatospora evansi, a parasite from dragonfly naiads. Amoebogregarina taeniopoda n. sp. and Q. mexicana n. sp. represent the first record of eugregarines found to infect a species of the family Romaleidae.