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Background: Only a few comprehensive studies have been carried out on parasites in amphibians and reptiles in Ukraine. This has resulted in identifying over 100 helminth species across these vertebrate groups. However, most of the studies were performed in the 20 th century and the taxonomy of many parasites and their hosts has changed ever since, in addition to the discovery of new species and registrations of species that had not been previously known for Ukraine. In recent decades, there have been very few publications on helminths from amphibian or reptile hosts in this region. Notably, just one of these recent studies is a faunistic study, providing a list of helminths found in two species of green frogs - Pelophylaxridibundus (Pallas, 1771) and Pelophylaxesculentus (Linnaeus, 1758). Therefore, it is clear that publishing datasets of modern records of helminths in these vertebrate groups, based on modern taxonomy, is an essential step in further studies of their parasitic diversity. Additionally, such study is important in terms of global climate change, the growing number of possibilities of invasion of alien species (both hosts and parasites) that might potentially become a threat to native biota and growing anthropogenic pressure on local populations of hosts that affect the parasites as well. In future, this study is planned to be used for the creation of a checklist of helminths of the herpetofauna of Ukraine. The present dataset is an inventory of various species of helminths parasitising common species of the herpetofauna in central, northern, western and southern Ukraine recorded during field studies in the 2021-2023 period., New Information: The dataset is the first one to represent the up-to-date and unified data on helminths of reptiles and amphibians of Ukraine. Previously, records of this group of organisms with reference to their hosts were presented as several separate records within the country. Currently, this is the largest dataset presenting geocoded records of non-human-related helminths in the fauna of Ukraine. It reports helminth species from 15 hosts (205 individuals), including eight amphibians and seven reptilian species found in various Ukrainian regions. A total of 47 helminth species have been documented in the research and during 2021-2023 period on the territory of northern (Kyiv and Zhytomyr), western (Lviv, Zakarpattia Ivano-Frankivsk), central (Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy, Zaporizhzhia and Poltava) and southern (Odesa) regions of Ukraine. The identified helminth species belong to the following phyla: Acanthocephala (Centrorhynchidae (2), Echinorhynchidae (2)); Nematoda (Acuariidae, Anisakidae, Cosmocercidae (3), Dioctophymatidae, Gnathostomatidae (1), Kathlanidae (1), Molineidae (7), Onchocercidae (1), Pharyngodonidae (1), Rhabdiasidae (6), Strongyloididae); Platyhelminthes (Diplodiscidae (1), Diplostomidae (2), Encyclometridae (1), Haematoloechidae (1), Leptophallidae (2), Macroderidae (1), Mesocestoididae, Opisthorchiidae (2), Plagiorchiidae (3), Pleurogenidae (2), Polystomatidae (3), Proteocephalidae (1), Strigeidae (1) and Telorchiidae (3)). Only some helminths in the dataset were not identified to species level. Material is stored in the collection of the department of Parasitology of the I. I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology NAS of Ukraine., (Oleksii Marushchak, Yaroslav Syrota, Ivanna Dmytrieva, Yuri Kuzmin, Andrii Nechai, Olga Lisitsyna, Roman Svitin.)

Purpose: The study aims to characterise and compare the helminth assemblages and helminth infracommunities in the marsh frog, Pelophylax ridibundus and the edible frog, P. esculentus collected in the northern part of Ukraine., Methods: Occurrence and abundance of the helminths were analysed by calculating the prevalence, intensity, and mean abundance of infection; similarities between the infracommunities were estimated by the Bray-Curtis index and visualised using nMDS plots. Dissimilarities were estimated using the ANOSIM and SIMPER routines., Results: In total, 27 helminth species were found in 143 frogs. Pelophylax ridibundus (n = 86) harboured 20 species of helminths, 24 species were found in P. esculentus (n = 57), and 17 species were shared by the two hosts. Oswaldocruzia bialata and larval Strigea sp. were absent in P. ridibundus, while they reached the prevalence of 30% and 10%, respectively, in P. esculentus. Cosmocerca ornata, Diplodiscus subclavatus, Opisthioglyphe ranae, and Codonocephalus urniger had significantly larger prevalence in P. ridibundus, whereas Haematoloechus asper was found to be more prevalent in P. esculentus. Acanthocephalus ranae, Icosiella neglecta, Haematoloechus variegatus, Pleurogenes claviger, Pleurogenoides medians, and Prosotocus confusus were equally common in both hosts. Helminth infracommunities in the two hosts had identical species richness (1-10 species, 4 on average); abundance was significantly higher in P. ridibundus., Conclusions: Helminth assemblages of the two hosts in northern Ukraine are rather similar; however, small but significant differences were found in their species composition, parameters of infection in some species, and structure of helminth infracommunities.

Codonocephalus is a monotypic genus of diplostomid digeneans and is the only genus in the sub-family Codonocephalinae. The type-species Codonocephalus urniger has an unusual progenetic metacercaria that uses frogs as intermediate hosts and can use snakes as paratenic hosts. Adult C. urniger parasitize ardeid wading birds in the Palearctic. Despite the broad distribution of Codonocephalus , no DNA sequence data are currently available for the genus. In this study, we generated sequence data for nuclear ribosomal and mitochondrial DNA from progenetic metacercaria of the type-species C. urniger from marsh frog, Pelophylax ridibundus , collected in Ukraine. We used partial sequences of the nuclear ribosomal 28S gene to examine for the first time the phylogenetic position of Codonocephalus among the Diplostomoidea.