Diversity of Enterocytozoon bieneusi genotypes in wild small rodent populations still remains incomplete and only few molecular studies have been conducted among these hosts. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine whether small rodents, i.e., Apodemus agrarius, Apodemus flavicollis, Mus musculus and Myodes glareolus act as hosts of E. bieneusi and can play an important role in spore spreading in the environment of south-western Poland. Molecular analyses were conducted to determine pathogen genotypes. A total of 191 fecal and 251 spleen samples collected from 311 rodent individuals were examined for the occurrence of E. bieneusi by PCR amplifying ITS gene. The overall prevalence of E. bieneusi in rodent samples was 38.9%. The nucleotide sequences of ITS region of E. bieneusi revealed the presence a total of 12 genotypes with two being already known, i.e., D and gorilla 1 genotypes. The remaining ten are novel genotypes (WR1-WR10) which segregated into three groups in a neighbor joining phylogeny. This study reports for the first time E. bieneusi occurrence in wild living rodents in Poland and shows extensive genetic diversity within E. bieneusi isolates of rodent origin.

Department of Parasitology Institute of Genetics and Microbiology Wrocław University Przybyszewskiego 63 51 148 Wrocław Poland

Faculty of Agriculture University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice Studentská 13 370 05 České Budějovice Czech Republic; Institute of Parasitology The Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences Branišovská 31 370 05 České Budějovice Czech Republic

Institute of Parasitology The Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences Branišovská 31 370 05 České Budějovice Czech Republic

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