Cryptosporidium species

Guo, Yaqiong, Li, Na, Feng, Yaoyu & Xiao, Lihua, 2021, Zoonotic parasites in farmed exotic animals in China: Implications to public health, International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife 14, pp. 241-247 : 243

2.2. Cryptosporidium species and subtypes in bamboo rats

Similarly, several Cryptosporidium species and genotypes were found in farmed bamboo rats in China. Among them, C. parvum was one of the dominant species in the a few studies conducted in southern China. Other common genotypes include Cryptosporidium bamboo rat genotypes I and IIII, which are genetically related to C. ubiquitum and C. parvum , respectively ( Li et al., 2020b). The remaining species and genotypes ( C. occultus , C. muris , and bamboo rat genotype II) have been found in only a few animals ( Table 1), thus could represent native parasites of other rodents. In the latter, bamboo rat genotype is genetically similar to a genotype in found in a masked palm civet ( Yu et al., 2020). The intensity of oocyst shedding was higher when animals were infected with C. parvum and C. parvum -like genotype (bamboo rat genotype III) than with other Cryptosporidium spp. ( Li et al., 2020a, 2020b).

The C. parvum subtypes found in bamboo rats belong mostly to two divergent subtype families (IIo and IIp) of C. parvum , which are genetically related to the IId subtype family and have been thus far reported only in Asia ( Li et al., 2020a; Liu et al., 2015; Wei et al., 2019). Two subtypes of each subtype family have been identified in bamboo rats from various areas, including IIoA13G1, IIoA15G1, IIpA6 and IIpA9 ( Li et al., 2020a, 2020b; Liu et al., 2015; Wei et al., 2019). One bamboo rat was identified as having the C. parvum IIdA15G1 subtype ( Wei et al., 2019).