Detecting co-infections of and in coyotes and red foxes in Alberta, Canada using real-time PCR.

The continued monitoring of species in intermediate and definitive hosts is essential to understand the eco-epidemiology of these parasites, as well to assess their potential impact on public health. In Canada, co-infections of and based on genetic characterization have been recently reported in wolves, but not yet in other possible hosts such as coyotes and foxes. In this study, we aimed to develop a quantitative real-time PCR assay to detect and and estimate the occurrence of co-infections while inferring about the relative abundance of the two parasites within hosts. We tested DNA extracted from aliquots of spp. specimens collected from intestinal tracts of 24 coyote and 16 fox carcasses from Alberta, Canada. We found evidence of co-infections of and in 11 out of 40 (27%) samples, with 8 out of 24 (33%) in coyote samples and 3 out of 16 (19%) in red fox samples. DNA concentrations were estimated in three samples with Cq values within the range of the standard curve for both parasites; two of them presented higher DNA concentrations of than . The use of qPCR aided detection of co-infections when morphological discrimination was difficult and quantification of DNA for samples within the standard curve. This is the first molecularly confirmed record of in coyotes and the first evidence of co-infections of and in coyotes and red foxes.