Intestinal ciliates of Brazilian Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris L.)

Abstract

Abstract. In our study, we aimed to identify and quantify the intestinal ciliates in a Brazilian capybara and to compare the obtained data with previous studies on the capybara ciliate community in other geographic locations within the American continent. We identified 20 species belonging to four families and ten genera. This is the first study on intestinal ciliates in Brazilian capybara since the last reports for the country in the 1960s. Among the identified species, Anacharon gracilis, A. lepturus, Cycloposthium bursa, Monoposthium cynodontum, Ogimotopsis pumila, Paracunhamunizia calocoma, Protohallia nana and Uropogon urai were recorded for the first time in Brazil, and the giant ciliate Muniziella cunhai was observed for the second time in a symbiotic association with capybaras in the country. The present study highlighted the importance of knowing the gastrointestinal ciliate community associated with wild hosts in order to better understand their geographic distribution and host specificity.

Parasites Circulating in Wild Synanthropic Capybaras (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris): A One Health Approach

“…Macroscopic parasites were identified using an Olympus SZX7 (Olympus Corporation, Tokyo, Japan) stereomicroscope system with Olympus DP27 digital camera and the above-described software. The parasite stages' identification was based on general morphology, shape, size, and color, according to [24,29,33,62,[76][77][78].…”

Giants’ cooperation: a draft genome of the giant ciliate Muniziella cunhai suggests its ecological role in the capybara’s digestive metabolism

“…Batisse [44] re-examined Fonseca’s material and provided a new description of the species using histological sections stained with ferric hematoxylin, eosin, and light green. In addition to other Brazilian reports [8], the species had been documented in samples from Venezuela [45] and Bolivia [6].…”

“…The high density of M. cunhai in the cecal content of cabybaras (~5×10 4 cells ml −1 ) [8] led us to investigate the details of this symbiotic relationship by mining information from genomic data. Muniziella cunhai represents the first trichostomatid hindgut fermenter symbiont characterized in a genomic perspective and provides insights into the symbiotic relationship of trichostomatids with their hosts.…”

“…Ciliates from capybara’s cecum belong to two orders of the class Litostomatea, subclass Trichostomatia: the order Entodiniomorphida, mainly represented by species of the family Cycloposthiidae, and the order Vestibuliferida, represented by ciliates from the families Hydrochoerellidae, Protohallidae, and Pycnotrichidae () [6–9].…”

“…[5] presented the role of Eubacteria in breaking down structural carbohydrates. Although ciliates constitute most of this microbiome biomass [8], their functional role remains unknown; so far, studies have focused mainly on their morphology and systematics [7–9, 18].…”