Encephalitozoon

Hinney, Barbara, Sak, Bohumil, Joachim, Anja & Kva ́ ̆ c, Martin, 2016, More than a rabbit's tale - Encephalitozoon spp. in wild mammals and birds, International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife 5 (1), pp. 76-87 : 82

3.2.4. Encephalitozoon in the order Carnivora

While examination of wild canids from Iceland showed that 11% of the examined arctic foxes ( Alopex lagopus ) had positive antibody titres against E. cuniculi ( Hersteinsson et al., 1993) , Åkerstedt and Kapel (2003) did not detect E. cuniculi infections in arctic foxes in Greenland and suggested that these differences to the study in Iceland were due to different feeding habits. Unlike foxes in Iceland, mice are not part of the diet of foxes in Greenland.

In the UK, red foxes had higher seroprevalences than rodents from the same area, namely 52%. They might therefore play an important role as a reservoir for microsporidia in the sylvatic cycle and could be suitable sentinel animals ( Meredith et al., 2015).