New hosts for Chagas disease vectors identified
Kissing bugs, just like the specimen proven on this picture, could also be contaminated with Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas illness. Credit score: UC Riverside Solitary weasel-like animals known as tayra would possibly look fairly innocent, however some may very well be incubators for a parasite that causes Chagas illness, a persistent, debilitating situation that's unfold by bugs known as kissing bugs and impacts greater than eight million folks worldwide. In a examine printed at this time within the journal PeerJ , researchers from the College of California, Riverside have recognized a number of new hosts for parasite-spreading kissing bug species, together with tayras, new world monkeys, sloths, porcupines, and coatis -- that are the South Am...