Helminth fauna of sympatric Przewalski’s Equus przewalskii Poljakov, 1881 and domestic horses E. caballus L. in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, Ukraine

Abstract

SummaryIn 1998 Przewalski's horses have been introduced in the Chernobyl exclusion zone (CEZ), N Ukraine. They live in the zone under natural conditions. No anthelminthic treatment to these introduced horses has been applied to date. In this same area, 19 domestic horses were also stabled by some peasants. Eighteen years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and five years after this introduction, the diagnostic dehelminthisation method has been applied both to the Przewalski's horses (n = 21) and the domestic horses (n = 6). In addition, in one Przewalski's and one domestic horse helmith fauna was surveyed using the post-mortem method. A total of 29 and 19 helminth species has been recorded in the Przewalski's and domestic horses respectively. Only six helminth species were common for the two horse species compared. Species from the family Strongylidae constituted the dominant helminth group. Four cyathostomine species (Cyathostomum catinatum; Cylicostephanus minutus, C. longibursatus, Cylicocyclus nassatus) formed the majority of helminth parasites both in the Przewalski's and domestic horses. Our findings suggest that the CEZ has no effect on the species diversity of helminth fauna parasiting Przewalski's horses, neither it has an effect on the prevalence and intensity of parasite infestation. Behavioural and ecological studies also support the lack of such effect.

Gastro-intestinal parasites in yearlings of wild Polish primitive horses from the Popielno Forest Reserve, Poland

“…It is important to point out that two cyathostome species, Cyathostomum montgomeryi and Cylicostephanus bidentatus were recorded for the first time in the wild and brood horses (E. caballus) in Poland. The present results are similar to those obtained in the earlier study of Przewalski horses under natural conditions in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), Ukraine (Slivinska et al, 2006). Characteristics of area and climatic conditions for Przewalski horse and Polish primitive horse are (Gawor, 2000), which is similar to the present results, but on the contrary to our data C. nassatus in the previous investigations was much less plentiful (4.8 %).…”

“…Hence, there are no data on gastro-intestinal parasites of the wild Polish primitive horses from the reserve. In this study, gastro-intestinal parasites of wild yearlings captured in the Reserve were collected using the technique of diagnostic deworming (Kuzmina et al, 2005 (Slivinska et al, 2006) is the basis for ecological management of the parasitological situation in free-living horses.…”

A Ten-Stage Protocol for Assessing the Welfare of Individual Non-Captive Wild Animals: Free-Roaming Horses (Equus Ferus Caballus) as an Example

“…Consequently, such indices may provide information about future welfare risks, and thus become important welfare alerting indices. Some other animal-based indices, such as faecal egg counts (FECs), may also only provide welfare alerting rather than welfare status information (Figure 5b, Table 2), because, when FEC is high, free-roaming horses frequently do not exhibit overt clinical signs of disease [118,119]. Hence, interpreted in isolation they do not necessarily indicate presence of intestinal pathology and any related negative experience.…”

Gastrointestinal helminths detected in wild horses in Konya Province, Turkey

“…The number of studies on gastrointestinal parasites of wild horses is insufficient worldwide. Many helminths, especially S. vulgaris, have been detected in the studies performed [16,25,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. The presence of strongyle eggs and some other helminth infections in wild horses has been reported in the USA [29,35], Canada [34], Australia [25], Venezuela [32], Ukraine [30], and Poland [31,33].…”