New paper on gastrointestinal parasites of sloths in Costa Rica

Research highlight: gastrointestinal parasites of Costa Rican sloths (Ezequiel Vanderhoeven et al.)

A new paper from the Kartzinel Lab is the first to compare the parasites of wild two- and three-toed sloths living in both primary forests and urban habitats. Led by Ezequiel Vanderhoeven, the paper Host specificity of gastrointestinal parasites in free-ranging sloths from Costa Rica was published in partnership with our friends at Sloth Conservation Foundation.

With the help of a great team and a detection dog, this paper reports the first records several potentially new parasites for both species of sloth. Indeed, we found eight types of parasites from just 38 fecal samples, which we were surprised to discover matches the total number of  parasite types reported in the literature for sloths over the last 100 years.

We also found zero evidence for parasite sharing between two- and three-toed sloths, even though they often overlap at very fine scales in their habitats and share so many interesting characteristics. The more common types of parasites we found in each species were present in multiple populations -- suggesting they are widespread within their hosts -- but rare parasites tended to be restricted to hosts from the primary forest. 

This is just the beginning of our work with sloths and their parasites -- a fun, interesting, and important step we are taking together with our partners at Sloth Conservation Foundation. You can check SloCo's blog about it here!