First report of Enterocytozoon bieneusi and Cryptosporidium spp. in peafowl (Pavo cristatus) in China

Feng, Sheng-Yong; Chang, Han; Luo, Jing; Huang, Jing-Jing; He, Hong-Xuan

Genotypes of E. bieneusi have been identified by analyzing the sequence of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of the rRNA gene and more than 240 genotypes have been identified up to now (Santin and Fayer, 2009 ). The genotypes of E. bieneusi have been divided into 9 groups (group 1-9) according to phylogenetic analysis, including a zoonotic group and other host specific groups (Zhang et al., 2018b) . For Cryptosporidium spp., more than 30 species and 40 genotypes have been characterized by analysing the small subunit (SSU) rRNA gene (Holubova et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2016) . Some species have been detected in humans (Ryan et al., 2016) . In addition to Cryptosporidium baileyi, Cryptosporidium galli and Cryptosporidium meleagridis which are specific for birds (Current et al., 1986; Ryan et al., 2003; Slavin, 1955) , also other genotypes of Cryptosporidium, such as goose genotypes I-IV and avian genotypes I-V, have been detected in different avian species (Ryan, 2010) .