In Colombia, five
Biomphalaria
planorbid species are known:
B. kuhniana,
B. straminea,
B. peregrina,
B. canonica and
B. oligoza(var.
B. philippiana). Among them,
B. straminea is intermediate host of Schistosoma mansoni and
B. peregrina
has been found to be experimentally susceptible to this parasite.
B. straminea
is commonly confused with
B. kuhniana and they have been clustered together
with
B. intermedia in the complex named
B. straminea. The difficulties
involved in the specific identification, based on morphological data, have motivated
the use of new techniques as auxiliary tools in cases of inconclusive morphological
identification of such planorbid. In the present study, five Biomphalaria populations
from the Colombian Amazon region and from Interandian Valleys were morphologically
identified and characterized by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment
lenght polymorphism directed at the internal transcribed spacer region of the
rRNA gene, followed by digestion of the generated fragment with restriction enzymes
(DdeI, AluI, RsaI, MvaI and HaeIII). Known profiles of the Brazilian species
B.
straminea,
B. peregrina,
B. kuhniana,
B. intermedia and
B. amazonica, besides
B. kuhniana from Colombia, were used for comparison.
The five populations under study were morphologically and molecularly identified
as
B. kuhniana and
B. amazonica.