ABSTRACT

Parasites in wildlife tend to be poorly studied in spite of the ecological roles they play, and even basic information such as the geographic distribution of the parasites and the hosts they infect or infest are not well known. For parasites that live within the host, part of the reason for this lack of information is that the hosts must be killed and dissected to determine which endoparasites they harbour, which has legal and/or ethical implications and limitations. These obstacles can be overcome by collecting and examining potential hosts that are found dead on roads or that are sacrificed as part of other non-related studies. In this study, our objective was to expand on our understanding of the gastrointestinal parasites of some common reptiles from an area in the vicinity of a study site in the Mid North region of South Australia by making use of snakes and large lizards that were found dead on roads or that were humanely killed for another study. Our study provides new locality and/or host species records for some parasite species.

摘要

尽管野生动物中的寄生虫发挥着生态作用，但它们的研究往往很少，甚至连寄生虫的地理分布和它们感染或感染的宿主等基本信息也不为人所知。对于生活在宿主体内的寄生虫，缺乏信息的部分原因是必须杀死并解剖宿主以确定它们携带哪些体内寄生虫，这具有法律和/或道德影响和限制。这些障碍可以通过收集和检查在道路上被发现死亡或作为其他非相关研究的一部分而被牺牲的潜在宿主来克服。在这项研究中，我们的目标是通过利用在道路上发现死亡的蛇和大型蜥蜴，扩大我们对南澳大利亚中北部地区研究地点附近地区一些常见爬行动物胃肠寄生虫的了解。被人道杀害以进行另一项研究。我们的研究为某些寄生虫物种提供了新的位置和/或宿主物种记录。