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Effects of habitat fragmentation on wild mammal infection by Trypanosoma cruzi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2007

V. C. VAZ ,
P. S. D'ANDREA  and
A. M. JANSEN
V. C. VAZ
Affiliation:
Laboratório de Biologia e Parasitologia de Mamíferos Silvestres Reservatórios, Departamento de Medicina Tropical, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Av. Brasil 4365, P.O. Box 926, Rio de Janeiro, 21040-360, RJ, Brasil Laboratório de Biologia de Tripanosomatídeos, Departamento de Protozoologia, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biologia Prasitária, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz
P. S. D'ANDREA
Affiliation:
Laboratório de Biologia e Parasitologia de Mamíferos Silvestres Reservatórios, Departamento de Medicina Tropical, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Av. Brasil 4365, P.O. Box 926, Rio de Janeiro, 21040-360, RJ, Brasil
A. M. JANSEN*
Affiliation:
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biologia Prasitária, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz
*
*Corresponding author: Departamento de Protozoologia, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Av. Brasil 4365, Manguinhos C.P. 926, 21040-360, Rio de Janeiro/RJ, Brazil. Tel: and Fax: +55 21 2560 6572. E-mail: [email protected]
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Summary

Expansion of human activities frequently results in habitat fragmentation, a phenomenon that has been widely recognized in the last decades as one of the major threats to world's biodiversity. The transformation of a continuous forest into a fragmented area results in a hyper-dynamic landscape with unpredictable consequences to overall ecosystem health. The effect of the fragmentation process on Trypanosoma cruzi infection among small wild mammals was studied in an Atlantic Rain Forest landscape. Comparing continous forest to fragmented habitat, marsupials were less abundant than rodents in the continuous landscape. An overall decrease in small wild mammal richness was observed in the smaller fragments. An anti-T. cruzi seroprevalence of 18% (82/440) was deteced by immunofluorescence assay. Moreover, this seroprevalence was higher in the fragmented habitat than in the continuous forest. According to the collected data, 3 main factors seem to modulate infection by T. cruzi in small wild mammals: (i) habitat fragmentation; (ii) biodiversity loss; (iii) increase of marsupial abundance in mammal communities. Furthermore, an extremely mild controlled infection by T. cruzi was detected since no patent parasitaemia could be detected in fresh blood samples, and no parasites were isolated by haemoculture.

Keywords

habitat fragmentationbiodiversitysmall mammalsmulti-host parasiteTrypanosoma cruzi
Type
Research Article
Information
Parasitology , Volume 134 , Issue 12 , November 2007 , pp. 1785 - 1793
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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