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Some Blood Parasites of New Zealand Birds

Plasmodium relictum (Grassi and Feletti, 1891) — var. spheniscidae (Fantham and Porter, 1944)

Plasmodium relictum (Grassi and Feletti, 1891)
var. spheniscidae (Fantham and Porter, 1944)

Fantham and Porter (1944) described Plasmodium relictum var. spheniscidae from blood smears taken from four species of penguins in their natural habitats. These authors justified their description of a new variety on the grounds of the large vacuoles of the ring stages, the large size of the schizonts, the high level of intraerythrocytic schizogony together with the low gametocyte level, arid the small size of the gametocytes, as "compared with the corresponding stages of Plasmodium relictum in other hosts. One of the infected birds (Eudyptes) = Megadyptes antipodes (yellow-crowned penguin) was taken in Foveaux Strait between the South Island and Stewart Island.

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During my survey I found the same variety of P. relictum in smears taken from one of two examples of Megadyptes antipodes in Campbell Island, also in preparations from three of 28 examples of Eudyptes pachyrhynchus (drooping-crested penguin) collected at the Snares Islands. The latter host is a new one for Plasmodium, and both localities are new. In all cases the infections were very light. This variety of P. relictum is mentioned here only because it has previously been recorded from New Zealand, and it is proposed to incorporate a full description of the material from Campbell Island and the Snares Islands in a paper on the haematozoa of the subantarctic islands which is in course of preparation.