Investigation of the Piroplasm Diversity Circulating in Wildlife and Cattle of the Greater Kafue Ecosystem, Zambia
Abstract Background: Piroplasms are vector-borne intracellular haemoprotozoan parasites that infect wildlife and livestock. Wildlife species are reservoir hosts to a diversity of piroplasms and play an important role in the circulation, maintenance and evolution of these parasites. The potential for likely spillover of both pathogenic and non-pathogenic piroplasms from wildlife to livestock is underlined when common ecological niche is shared in the presence of a competent vector. Method: To investigate piroplasm cryptic variation and diversity in parasite community in wildlife and cattle population of the greater Kafue ecosystem, we utilized PCR to amplify the 18S rRNA V4 hyper-variable region and meta-barcoding strategy using illumina MiSeq sequencing platform and amplicon sequence variant (ASV) based bioinformatics pipeline to generate high resolution data which discriminate sequences down to a single nucleotide difference. Results: A parasite community of 45 ASVs and 23 piroplasm species consisting of 4 genera of Babesia, Theileria, Hepatozoon and Colpodella was identified in wildlife and cattle population from the study area. Conclusion: The findings of this study demonstrates the usefulness of illumina MiSeq sequencing to describe the area specific parasite composition, which is critical in the application and establishment of disease control strategy options of ideal diagnostic tools to employ and area specific vaccine development.