Host-adapted Cryptosporidium and Enterocytozoon bieneusi genotypes in straw-colored fruit bats in Nigeria

Li, Na; Ayinmode, Adekunle B.; Zhang, Hongwei; Feng, Yaoyu; Xiao, Lihua

Results of this preliminary study have shown the occurrence of Cryptosporidium spp. and E. bieneusi, but not G. duodenalis, in fruit bats living in an urban public park in Nigeria. The 5.5% infection rate for Cryptosporidium spp. is in line with the 2.1-8.9% infection rates of Cryptosporidium spp. reported in previous studies of several species of bats in Australia, USA, Czech Republic, China and Philippians (Kvac et al., 2015; Murakoshi et al., 2016; Schiller et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2013) . The 14.7% detection rate of E. bieneusi in fruit bats examined in this study was significantly higher than the 1.9% detection rate of E. bieneusi in eight species of bats analyzed recently in South Korea (Lee et al., 2018) . Giardia duodenalis was not examined in any of the previous studies of enteric protozoa in bats. Despite the use of a PCR assay that is designed to detect divergent Giardia species (Sulaiman et al., 2003a) , we failed in obtaining any expected PCR products, indicating that G. duodenalis is not common in the bat species examined in Nigeria.