Taenia taeniaeformis infection

Gil, Miguel Pardo, Hegglin, Daniel, Briner, Thomas, Ruetten, Maja, Müller, Norbert, Gaston, More, Frey, Caroline F., Deplazes, Peter & Basso, Walter, 2023, High prevalence rates of Toxoplasma gondii in cat-hunted small mammals - Evidence for parasite induced behavioural manipulation in the natural environment?, International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife 20, pp. 108-116 : 113-114

4.2. Frequency of Taenia taeniaeformis infection

The cestode T. taeniaeformis develops to its adult and patent stage almost exclusively in the cat ( Deplazes et al., 2016; Reperant et al.,

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2009), which renders cats the main source of transmission. Rodents act as intermediate hosts, in which T. taeniaeformis causes life-long infections ( Burlet et al., 2011), making the parasite more prevalent in older animals. Taenia taeniaeformis was found in three (i.e., A. amphibius s.l., Apodemus spp. , M. arvalis ) out of the six small mammal species subject to study. Arvicola amphibius s.l. has been found to be a frequent intermediate host of the parasite ( Burlet et al., 2011). High prevalences have been previously described in Switzerland, with a 12.1% prevalence in the city of Zurich ( Stieger et al., 2002), a 23.4% prevalence in the canton of Zurich ( Burlet et al., 2011) and a 44.3% prevalence in adult A. amphibius s.l. in the canton of Geneva ( Reperant et al., 2009). In accordance with these findings, we observed a higher presence of T. taeniaeformis in A. amphibius s.l. than in the other affected rodent species ( Table 4, Supplementary material 2). This might be due to the longer lifespan of A. amphibius s.l. compared to the other species, and due to its specific ecological requirements. It is a fossorial species that lives in burrows and is therefore always in contact with soil ( Gotteland et al., 2014); the loose soil of the burrows of A. amphibius s.l. constitutes an ideal place for the cats to defecate, as they like to bury their faeces in loose ground ( Burlet et al., 2011).

The fact that T. taeniaeformis was found in all three different groups of cat-hunted small-mammals and also in the trap-captured group of rodents, highlights the presence of domestic cats and their faecal contamination in all of the sampling areas included in the study. It is worth mentioning the high prevalence (29.2%) in the A. amphibius s.l. trap-captured group, which indicates a considerable presence of cats in the sampled area.