New paper on gastrointestinal parasites of sloths in Costa Rica

Out this month in PeerJ, a paper led by Ezequiel Vanderhoeven on "Host specificity of gastrointestinal parasites in free-ranging sloths from Costa Rica."

This paper is the first to compare compare the parasites of wild two- and three-toed sloths across both primary forests and urban habitats. In partnership with our friends at Sloth Conservation Foundation and their detection dog, our team went searching for sloth latrines at La Selva Biological Station and Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. 

We found a bunch of potentially new parasites for both species. 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!