Investigation of the Piroplasm Diversity Circulating in Wildlife and Cattle of the Greater Kafue Ecosystem, Zambia

Abstract

Background: Piroplasms are vector-borne intracellular haemoprotozoan parasites that infect wildlife and livestock. Wildlife species are reservoir hosts to a diversity of piroplasms and play an important role in the circulation, maintenance and evolution of these parasites. The potential for likely spillover of both pathogenic and non-pathogenic piroplasms from wildlife to livestock is underlined when common ecological niche is shared in the presence of a competent vector. Method: To investigate piroplasm cryptic variation and diversity in parasite community in wildlife and cattle population of the greater Kafue ecosystem, we utilized PCR to amplify the 18S rRNA V4 hyper-variable region and meta-barcoding strategy using illumina MiSeq sequencing platform and amplicon sequence variant (ASV) based bioinformatics pipeline to generate high resolution data which discriminate sequences down to a single nucleotide difference. Results: A parasite community of 45 ASVs and 23 piroplasm species consisting of 4 genera of Babesia, Theileria, Hepatozoon and Colpodella was identified in wildlife and cattle population from the study area. Conclusion: The findings of this study demonstrates the usefulness of illumina MiSeq sequencing to describe the area specific parasite composition, which is critical in the application and establishment of disease control strategy options of ideal diagnostic tools to employ and area specific vaccine development.

First report on detection of Hepatozoon ayorgbor in Rhipicephalus haemaphysaloides and Hepatozoon colubri in Haemaphysalis sulcata and Hyalomma anatolicum: risks of spillover of Hepatozoon spp. from wildlife to domestic animals

“…Pakistan is the seventh most vulnerable country to climate change (72), which may influence vector dynamics, including ticks, potentially leading to crossspecies transmission of Hepatozoon spp. Like previous studies, which provided evidences for the spillover of Hepatozoon species, including Hepatozoon americanum, H. canis, and Hepatozoon silvestris (10)(11)(12)(73)(74)(75)(76), the current study proposes the spillover of Hepatozoon spp. from wild to domestic hosts via ticks.…”

“…However, Hepatozoon spp. can cross-over from their specific wild hosts to unnatural wild and domestic hosts through different agents such as ticks (10)(11)(12)(13)). In the case of spillover, Hepatozoon spp.…”

Development and validation of a long-read metabarcoding platform for the detection of filarial worm pathogens infecting animals and humans

“…This data is important given the frequent use of these traditional diagnostics for epidemiological surveys of larial worms in both humans and animals, highlighting the importance of future deployment of more re ned and sensitive diagnostic techniques for better unravelling of parasite transmission dynamics (84-89). Our herein developed metabarcoding assay could show broad application to the detection of larial worms from diverse vectors and animal hosts, including humans, analogous to the way 16S and 18S rRNA metabarcoding of bacteria and protozoa has been used to detect vector-borne pathogens from ectoparasites like ticks and livestock, such as cattle (90)(91)(92)(93)(94)(95). Previous bacterial metabarcoding methodologies have demonstrated the potential for detection of the common larioid endosymbiotic bacteria Wolbachia spp.…”