Surrogate hosts: Hunting dogs and recolonizing grey wolves share their endoparasites.

摘要: Abstract Understanding how closely related wildlife species and their domesticated counterparts exchange or share parasites, replace each other in parasite life cycles, is of great interest to veterinary human public health, ecology. Grey wolves (Canis lupus) host spread endoparasites that can either directly infect canid conspecifics prey serving as intermediate hosts indirectly transmitted species. The wolf recolonization Central Europe represents an opportunity study transmission dynamics between domestic for cases when a definitive returns after local extinction – situation equivalent ‘removal experiment’. Here we investigate whether the re–appearance has increased pressure on hunting dogs group companion animals particular they have similar diet flush habitats hunting. We compared prevalence (P) richness (SR) helminths protozoan Sarcocystis determine were higher from areas (ndogs = 49) than control area (ndogs = 29) without wolves. Of S. grueneri S. taeniata, known ‘wolf specialists’. Five helminth 11 identified, which all eight shared Overall (P:38.5% vs. 24.1%; SRmean:0.4 0.3 species) (P:63.3% 65.5%, SRmean:2.1 1.8 did not differ sites. However, significantly more likely be infected with (P:45.2% 10.5%; p = 0.035). findings suggest increase infection risk since cervids are occasionally fed dogs. Furthermore, periodic anthelminthic treatment may effective measure infections regardless presence.