bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.09.136176; this version posted June 10, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Manuscript currently “in review” at Ecohealth (updated June 2020) 1 Gastrointestinal parasite community in the critically endangered West African lion 2 Sofia Kruszka1, Nyeema C. Harris1,2 3 1Applied Wildlife Ecology Lab, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan 4 1105 N. University Ave, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 5 2 Corresponding author:
[email protected] (NCH) 6 7 8 Abstract 9 Large carnivores of Africa, such as lions (Panthera leo), suffer from prey depletion and habitat 10 fragmentation, that possibly impact the composition of the gastrointestinal parasite community. 11 West African lions are particularly important, as this population is critically endangered and yet 12 little is known of their gastrointestinal parasite community, which can reflect the health and 13 resilience of the host population. From fecal samples collected in the W-Arly-Pendjari (WAP) 14 transboundary protected area complex in Burkina Faso and Niger, we identified 309 oocysts of at 15 least five different species using fecal flotation and sedimentation tests. We also compared these 16 gastrointestinal parasites to other results from surveys of lions from Southern and East African 17 regions and found similar taxa to previous surveys, but lower species richness across West 18 African samples. 19 20 Word Count = 1,491 (excluding references, table and figure) 21 22 23 24 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.09.136176; this version posted June 10, 2020.