Gastrointestinal parasites in wild and exotic animals from a Zoobotanical Park in Northeast of Brazil

Abstract

One of the obstacles for ex situ conservation of wild and exotic animals are the diseases that affect them in captivity and, among them, the endoparasitoses, which are very frequent. The objective of this study is to report the occurrence of endoparasites in the fecal samples of animals from the Arruda Câmara Zoobotanical Park, at João Pessoa, Paraiba State, Brazil, as well as to identify significant statistical differences between the percentages of each parasite species found. To this end, 66 fecal samples were obtained from 50 species of animals including mammals, birds, and reptiles. Statistical differences between the percentages of each parasite species were obtained using the binomial test at 5% significance level. A total of 54.5% (36/66) of the fecal samples were positive (p=0.539), among which 80.5% (29/36) presented nematodes, followed by cestodes 19.4% (07/36), protozoans 13.9% (05/36), and mites 16.7% (06/36). This study reports for the first time the association of Balantidium sp. with Tapirus terrestris, Bertiella sp. with Alouatta caraya, Hymenolepis spp., and Aspiculuris spp. as spurious parasites in reptiles; and Entamoeba coli and Eimeria spp. with Iguana iguana in the northeastern part of the country. This study provides knowledge about some of the endoparasites that may occur in zoos in the northeastern region of the country, as well as in expanding the ecological data on wild and exotic animals.

Gastrointestinal parasites in wild and exotic animals from a zoo in the State of Bahia, Brazil - first record

“…Among the zoological groups evaluated, birds and mammals were more parasitized than reptiles. This same pattern was detected by other authors (Batista et al, 2021;Mewius et al, 2021).…”

“…These results differ from other analyzes carried out with this species, where Batista et al (2021) found only protozoans in the tapir samples, with a predominance of trophozoites and cysts of Balantidium sp., and non-sporulated oocysts of coccidia.…”

“…Most fecal samples from animals from the zoo at Matinha Municipal Park, Itapetinga, Bahia were positive for gastrointestinal parasites. This same pattern was recorded in several studies with captive animals, whether in zoos or CETAS (Hofstatter & Guaraldo, 2015;Barbosa et al, 2019;Oliveira et al, 2020;Batista et al, 2021). Among the zoological groups evaluated, birds and mammals were more parasitized than reptiles.…”

“…The taxonomic identification of cysts, oocysts, and eggs was performed at the lowest possible taxonomic level with the help of specific bibliography (Brandão, 2007;Bowman et al, 2010;Lima et al, 2017;Carvalho, 2018;Monteiro, 2018;Zago, 2018;Ruivo, 2019;Taylor et al, 2020;Batista et al, 2021;Cesario, 2021;Souza et al, 2021). In some cases, when the characteristics and measurements performed did not allow a more specific refinement in the taxonomy, broader taxonomic categories were used, that is, Class (Trematoda), Order (Ascaridida, Strongylida), Family (Ancylostomatidae, Oxyuridae) or Superfamily (Trichostrongyloidea).…”

“…Coproparasitological assessments in Brazilian zoos are sparse and spaced (Barbosa et al, 2019), with records for the states of Goiás (Melo et al, 2021), São Paulo (Hofstatter & Guaraldo, 2015;Rodrigues et al, 2020), Paraíba (Batista et al, 2021), Paraná (Hofstatter & Guaraldo, 2015;Snak et al, 2017) Rio de Janeiro (Barros et al, 2017;Barbosa et al, 2019), Rio Grande do Sul (Mewius et al, 2021), Santa Catarina (Muller et al, 2005 and Sergipe (Santos et al, 2022).…”