Review of the parasitological researches on primates, with emphasis on anthropoids, as a tool for the study of emerging and retrospective zoonoses in archeology

FUGASSA MH

Necochea

Congreso; III Paleopathology Meeting in South American; 2009

Universidad Nacional del Centro

The parasitic specificity is mainly related to the phylogenetic history of both, hosts and parasites. Sometimes, the specificity is only apparent, and is due to differences between the ecological niche occupied by the host species and other potential hosts. For humans, because of the livelihood strategies that different cultural groups have developed - both ancient and also the modern marginalized cultural groups, the ecological profile deviates from the typical model. The comparative study with species phylogenetically closed, enables know humans vulnerable to some parasitic species, when man occupies new “atypical” ecological niches, in terms of the occidental ethnocentric approach. This study focuses on the search for parasites from host evolutionarily closed to humans, such as the primates and basically anthropoids, with the aim to contribute to the knowledge of emerging and reemerging zoonoses and to broaden the regional paleoparasitological data. An online search from various international publications dedicated to primatology and parasitology, was conducted. The descriptors used were: parasites, enteroparasites, anthropoids, ape, Gibbon, Hylobates, Gorilla, chimpanzee, Pan, Pongo and monkey. The review produced a list of parasite species typically associated to the subtropical and tropical biogeography of their hosts. These results limit the scope of this review to parasitic species with dispersal stages (eggs, larvae, cysts and oocysts) conditioned by the climate, and to parasites that exhibit intermediate hosts or vectors with distributions limited to the tropics. Despite of this, the review provides valuable information on other parasites with broader adaptations to environmental conditions, as those of southern latitudes.