[Animals] Do wild animals and livestock share parasites?

[-CosmiNNe]

Do animals share parasites? A simple question that has many implications for food webs, rare species and even environmental change. However, answering this question is difficult, especially when it comes to research on endangered species.

It is critical to understand disease transmission in a world of increasing contact between human and animal hosts.

An international study led by a researcher from UC Santa Barbara offers a promising solution to this question by revealing DNA isolated from the dung of large herbivores. This study discovered that there is a whole network of gastrointestinal parasites that spread among 17 species of wild and domestic herbivores.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, sheds light on patterns of parasite diversity in both wild and livestock animals.

The researchers found that gastrointestinal parasites tend to infect hosts in similar species, and pets play a major role in this network.

Find a better way
Georgia Titcombe, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wanted to understand how large, wild and domestic animals could share parasites while congregating around water sources, but Titcombe became increasingly frustrated with the use of traditional methods of manually identifying parasites. Parasite eggs are counted.

"I was looking at the microscope and seeing the eggs were quite similar. There was no way to know if the microscopic oval shape I found in cow dung could infect antelopes," Titcomb said - in a press release published on the university's website on June 6.

In search of a better way, Titcomb, the study's lead author, reached out to co-author Rob Pringle of Princeton University, who used what's known as DNA metabarcoding in the droppings of herbivores to figure out their diets. , with the aim of discovering the presence and diversity of parasites in 17 species of large herbivores housed in the Mbala Research Center in central Kenya.

nimals with hind gut, such as zebras, contain a variety of parasites (French)
The evolutionary history of the host
The researchers tested several variables, such as the host's body size, diet, and social group size, and found some key patterns.

The most important factor, Titcomb explained, is the host's evolutionary history, noting that the structure of the host's gut - the parasite's habitat - can determine the community of parasites present there.

The researchers suspected that the multi-chambered stomach might provide much of the habitat complexity for gut parasites.

As a result, these herbivores that digest plant matter in their foreguts—such as cows, antelopes, buffaloes, and giraffes—may contain a different set of parasites than the hindgut fermenters—such as zebras, donkeys, elephants, and pigs—which have a long colon where they absorb most nutrients.

Also, animals with similar types of gut tend to have similar evolutionary histories, and thus may share many other factors that influence parasites, such as immunity, so it is very difficult to separate the role of gut type from the host relationship.

The role of livestock
As a report on Phys points out, researchers have found genetically similar parasites in very different groups of animals - such as pigs, zebras and elephants - so they suspect the type of gut is responsible for the difference.

 

 

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Can the microscopic oval shape of parasite eggs found in cow dung infect antelopes? (Shutterstock)

Accounting for the important role livestock play in these networks is crucial to planning for the future. "All over the world, large mammal po[CENSORED]tions are declining, and their displacement by livestock parasites is increasing," says Pringle.

"The parasites of these animals have important impacts on their health and fitness, which presents a potential problem for their conservation and human livelihoods, insofar as wildlife can transmit diseases to livestock," he added.

The researchers believe their findings will be important for livestock management. Pringle stresses that a proper understanding of the factors that influence parasite networks is critical to designing effective protection plans and anticipating and managing disease outbreaks.

For example, the team found that 90% of camels were infected with at least one type of parasitic nematode, and that it was one of the most important species in the parasite-sharing network.

The researchers also point out that the method used is not perfect, while Titcomb noted that these results are still in the early stages, and that there is a lot of work to be done.

In the future, Titcomb expects holistic coding of parasite DNA samples to be an important tool for parasitologists and pathologists as they study infections.

 

https://www.aljazeera.net/news/science/2022/6/15/عند-موارد-الماء-تتشارك-الحيوانات