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ABSTRACT
The goat is one of the first herbivores to be domesticated, expanding throughout the world. Goats were introduced in South America during the sixteenth century. Gastrointestinal (GI) parasitism constitutes one of the main constraints to the breeding of goats worldwide. This is the first study conducted to investigate the GI parasites recovered from goat coprolites from historical times of Patagonia. Goat coprolites were studied from the archaeological site Cueva Huenul I. Coprolites were processed by rehydration followed by homogenisation and sieved for spontaneous sedimentation. Samples were examined by light microscopy. At least 12 parasite species were recorded. In this first paleoparasitological study of Patagonian ancient goats we found a high percentage of positive samples. We recorded parasite species that currently are common in wild and domestic ruminants, some of them are of public health and veterinary importance; several species are zoonotic. Our results suggest that this could also have been a problem in terms of animal and human health in historical times. The results urge further investigation of the diversity and origin of the infectious diseases of domesticated animals around the dispersal routes associated with ancient human activities and their interaction with native species.
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Notes on contributors
María Ornela Beltrame
Maria Ornela Beltrame is a biologist. She is a researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Producción, Sanidad y Ambiente (IIPROSAM), CONICET-Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata from Argentina. Her research focuses on paleoparasitological studies from archaeological and paleontological sites, using the ancient parasites remains for paleoecological and paleoenvironmental inferences. She currently directs several projects, which involved the paleoparasitological study of diverse wild and domestic mammals from the southern cone of South America, Argentina. She is the author/coauthor of several publications on Paleoparasitology.
Eleonor Tietze
Eleonor Tietze is a biologist at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Producción, Sanidad y Ambiente (IIPROSAM), CONICET-Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata from Argentina. Her research focuses on parasite assemblages of paleontological and archaeological sites of the Quaternary of Argentina.
Victoria Cañal
Victoria Cañal is a biologist currently working as Doctoral Fellow of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de Argentina (CONICET) at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Producción, Sanidad y Ambiente (IIPROSAM), CONICET-Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina. Her research is focused on the study of the paleobiogeography of gastrointestinal parasites from South American camelids in the Late Quaternary from the southern cone of South America.
Ramiro Barberena
Ramiro Barberena is an archaeologist at the Instituto Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Básicas (ICB) of CONICET and the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo from Argentina, Mendoza city. He studies the history of Andean human societies from an interdisciplinary biogeographic and archaeometric perspective. He currently directs an archaeological research project in northern Patagonia focusing on the human peopling of the continent and the interactions with environmental change. He has directed multiple projects from National Geographic, Wenner Gren, CONICET, and Agencia Nacional de Promoción de la Ciencia y la Tecnología.