Morphological, Morphometric and Molecular Characterization of the Plant-Parasitic Nematode: Hemicycliophora conida Thome, 1955 (Nematoda: Hemicycliophoridae) from Ethiopia

Abstract

Nematodes are considered as one of the most difficult organisms to identify because of their morphological similarity, microscopic size, limited number of informative Morphological characters, and overlapping morphometric measurements. Root ectoparasite
nematodes of the genus Hemicydiophora have wide distribution all over the world and feed on wide range of crop plants. The identified specimens of H. conida were found from rhizosphere of horticultural crops in the Rift Valley region of Ethiopia
and were characterized morphologically and molecularly. Morphometric and morphological descriptions were done using light microscopy. H. conida most closely resembles H. typica, but it differs by lack of sperm cell in the spermathecia. Phylogenetic analysis was done using Bayesian inference method. Based on the full 18S SSU rDNA sequence, the resulted tree showed monophyly with sequence of H. conida deposited in the GeneBank from the Netherlands with 3bp nucleotide difference. This report represents the first comprehensive information on this species from Ethiopia