Plains Vizcacha Endoparasites: An Exploration of Diversity, Health and Ecology

CANOVA V.; ROBLES M. R.; ABBA A. M.; NAVONE G. T.

Plains Vizcacha

Springer

Lugar: Cham; Año: 2024;

Parasites are an integral part of all ecosystems and have gained wideacceptance as biological tags since they can provide important information abouttheir hosts, including biology, diet, feeding behaviour, population structure, movements,geographical ranges and phylogenies. The plains vizcacha is a good modelfor studies on parasites since it has a particular behaviour (gregarious, coprophagicand allogrooming habits), a wide geographical distribution occurring in diverseecoregions, economic importance for causing damage on the fields and for havingmeat for consumption and a sanitary interest as a potential host for zoonotic orenzootic parasites. Different populations of this rodent have been studied from economic,biological and ecological aspects in Argentina; however, studies on thediversity of parasites or their implications for human and animal health are veryscarce. This chapter aims to explore the available information on plains vizcachaendoparasites considering their diversity, sanitary aspects, ecological data and distributionfrom host and environment. In this chapter, we present the following fivesections: (1)—Diversity of Parasitic Species, Geographical Records and EcologicalData; (2)—Animal and Human Health Considerations; (3)—Structure of ParasiticPopulations and Communities; (4)—Parasitic Species as Biotags of Plains Vizcacha;and (5)—Final Considerations.