Aim This study was designed to validate the effectiveness of the pig confinement system (PCS) in reducing the prevalence of zoonotic and internal parasite burdens in pigs. Materials and Methods Ten PCS households were selected together with 10 households practising traditional scavenging systems. Five pigs were monitored per household every 3 months for 15 months and blood and feces collected...

Social parasitism, one of the most intriguing phenomena in ants, has evolved to various levels, the most extreme form being parasites that have lost the worker caste and rely completely on the host's worker force to raise their brood. A remarkable feature of workerless social parasites is the small size of sexuals. It has been suggested that reduced size evolved as a means to take advantage of ...

SUMMARY The genotypes of both host and parasite may influence the outcome of parasitic infections, but few attempts have been made to quantify the effect of parasite genotype on macroparasite infections of socio-economic importance. We examined variation in particular traits during the infection in pigs with the parasitic nematode Ascaris suum. We infected 26 pigs with mixtures of equal proport...

Human demands on natural resources result in landscape changes that facilitate the emergence of disease. Most emerging diseases are zoonotic, and some of these pathogens play a role in the decline of vulnerable wildlife species. Baylisascaris procyonis, the common roundworm parasite of raccoons (Procyon lotor), is a well recognized zoonotic infection that has many of the properties associated w...

The intestinal parasite that family physicians are most likely to see in the office is the pinworm, Enterobius vermicularis. 1 Prevalence in the United States is estimated to be 20 to 42 million cases, with the greatest rate of infestation in children between the ages of 5 and 14 years. I Parents and other siblings will likely be infected if one child in the family becomes infected. Pinworms co...

The interaction between hosts and parasites in bird populations has been studied extensively. This paper uses game-theoretic methods to model this interaction. This has been done in previous papers but has not been studied taking into account the detailed sequential nature of this game. We introduce a model allowing the host and parasite to make a number of decisions which will depend on variou...

Faecal egg counts (FECs) are commonly used for the non-invasive assessment of parasite load within hosts. Sources of error, however, have been identified in laboratory techniques and sample storage. Here we focus on sampling error. We test whether a delay in sample collection can affect FECs, and estimate the number of samples needed to reliably assess mean parasite abundance within a host popu...

We illustrate some of the challenges and potential benefits of modelling parasite population dynamics in a spatially explicit manner, using the example of Echinococcus multilocularis in semi-arid areas of Kazakhstan. We show that by taking a parasite-focussed approach to modelling population dynamics, rather than the usual host-focussed approach, we gain new insights into the complex factors th...

Domestic environmental pollution resulting from urban livestock farming was investigated in Makurdi using parasitological techniques. The test tube flotation technique was used for the parasitological analysis of animal faecal matter and soil samples collected from residential premises. Ectoparasitic fauna of dogs, goats, sheep and cattle cohabiting with humans within the same residential compo...

Social parasites exhibit several characteristics that allow them to exploit their host species efficiently. The smaller size of parasite species is a trait commonly found in ants. In this work, we investigated several aspects of the reproductive biology of Acromyrmex ameliae De Souza, Soares & Della Lucia, a recently discovered parasite of Acromyrmex subterraneus subterraneus Forel. Sexuals of ...