Mammalian gastrointestinal parasites in rainforest remnants of Anamalai Hills, Western Ghats, India.
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Date
2015-06
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Abstract
Habitat fragmentation is postulated to be a major factor influencing infectious disease dynamics in wildlife populations
and may also be responsible, at least in part, for the recent spurt in the emergence, or re-emergence, of infectious
diseases in humans. The mechanism behind these relationships are poorly understood due to the lack of insights into
the interacting local factors and insufficient baseline data in ecological parasitology of wildlife. Here, we studied the
gastrointestinal parasites of nonhuman mammalian hosts living in 10 rainforest patches of the Anamalai Tiger
Reserve, India. We examined 349 faecal samples of 17 mammalian species and successfully identified 24 gastrointestinal
parasite taxa including 1 protozoan, 2 trematode, 3 cestode and 18 nematode taxa. Twenty of these parasites
are known parasites of humans. We also found that as much as 73% of all infected samples were infected by multiple
parasites. In addition, the smallest and most fragmented forest patches recorded the highest parasite richness; the
pattern across fragments, however, seemed to be less straightforward, suggesting potential interplay of local factors.
Description
Keywords
Gastrointestinal parasite, mammals, prevalence, rainforest, Western Ghats
Citation
Chakraborty Debapriyo, Hussain Shaik, Reddy D Mahendar, Raut Sachin, Tiwari Sunil, Kumar Vinod, Umapathy Govindhaswamy. Mammalian gastrointestinal parasites in rainforest remnants of Anamalai Hills, Western Ghats, India. Journal of Biosciences. 2015 June; 40(2): 399-406.