Wound myiasis caused by Lucilia spp. (Diptera: Calliphoridae) in a dog and a cat in Korea

This study presents 2 cases of wound myiasis in a dog and a cat involving morphological and molecular identification in Korea. A 7-year-old male Jindo mix dog, Canis familiaris, was admitted to a veterinary clinic in Yangsan-si, Gyeongsangnam-do, Korea, in July 2024. The bite wound near the right rib was infected with maggots. We carefully removed the 5 maggots using forceps. The wound healed without any subsequent complications. A Korean Shorthair stray cat, Felis catus, was brought to the same clinic in October 2024 after being hit by a car. The maggot-infected wounds were found in the anus and perianal regions. We removed all 10 maggots from the wounds. After treatment, no living maggots were observed; however, the cat was euthanized due to trauma-related complications. The maggots from the dog and the cat were third instars with 12 body segments and posterior spiracles containing 3 distinct slits. Compared with the dog-derived larvae, the cat-derived larvae had a more dorsally positioned posterior process of the mouth hook, reduced dorsal papillae distances, and distinctly sclerotized ventral cornua. Complete cox1 gene analysis confirmed the dog- and cat-derived larvae as Lucilia sericata (Meigen, 1826) and Lucilia illustris (Meigen, 1826), respectively, whereas 18S rRNA gene analysis showed limited species-level resolution. In the present study, wound myiasis caused by L. sericata and L. illustris is described in a dog and a cat in Korea based on morphological and molecular findings.