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

Abstract

Parasites are an integral part of all ecosystems and have gained wide acceptance as biological tags since they can provide important information about their hosts, including biology, diet, feeding behaviour, population structure, movements, geographical ranges and phylogenies. The plains vizcacha is a good model for studies on parasites since it has a particular behaviour (gregarious, coprophagic and allogrooming habits), a wide geographical distribution occurring in diverse ecoregions, economic importance for causing damage on the felds and for having meat for consumption and a sanitary interest as a potential host for zoonotic or enzootic parasites. Different populations of this rodent have been studied from economic, biological and ecological aspects in Argentina; however, studies on the diversity of parasites or their implications for human and animal health are very scarce. This chapter aims to explore the available information on plains vizcacha endoparasites considering their diversity, sanitary aspects, ecological data and distribution from host and environment. In this chapter, we present the following fve sections: (1)—Diversity of Parasitic Species, Geographical Records and Ecological Data; (2)—Animal and Human Health Considerations; (3)—Structure of Parasitic Populations and Communities; (4)—Potential Use of the Parasitic Species as Biotags; and (5)—Conclusions.