Prevalence of Cestodes in Baladi Chickens and Molecular Characterization of Raillietina echinobothrida in Menouf District, Menoufia, Egypt

Native Chickens' tapeworms are enteric obligatory intestinal parasites and cause losses in chicken production. The present study was conducted in Menouf district, Menoufia, Egypt through the year 2022 to determine the prevalence of tapeworms in chickens. A special study on morphology, sizes of recovered Raillietina echinobothrida, molecular characterization using ITS-2 rDNA region PCR and sequencing analysis, and P.M lesion was fully discussed. Intestinal samples of 898 randomly selected from Baladi chickens were subjected to parasitological examination. The cestodes had a prevalence of 12.03%. Raillietina spp. had a prevalence of 7.3%. The prevalence of each species was 1.7% for Raillietina tetragona, 3.6% for R. echinobothrida, and 2.1% for R. cesticellus. Cotugnia digonopora had a prevalence of 4.7%. The prevalence of infection was influenced also by season but not by locality. The PCR of ITS-2 rDNA of R. echinobothrida produced specific bands at 615 bp. The sequence had an identity percentage of 93.69% with the ITS-2 sequences of R. echinobothrida from Egypt and 90.96% with the ITS-2 sequence from China. The phylogenetic analysis showed that the sequence of ITS-2 of R. echinobothrida from Egypt clustered in the same taxon as the R. echinobothrida sequences from Egypt and China. The sequencing analysis using the ITS-2 gene will be a valuable tool for species identification. The current study presented the prevalence of cestodes in Baladi chickens and the molecular characterization of R. echinobothrida in Menouf district, Menoufia, Egypt. The effect of locality and season on the prevalence was considered at P < 0.05.