Differentiation of species eggs from non-human primates by geometric morphometric analysis.

Human trichuriasis is a neglected tropical disease which affects millions of people worldwide, mostly living in low socio-economic conditions. Numerous studies have been conducted over the past 10 years to compare the different techniques for eggs detection. Our study provides the first geometric morphometric analysis for the specific detection of eggs of sp. isolated from stools of macaque (, colobus (, grivets ( and the Brazza's monkey () from zoos in Spain. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) arises as an efficient method to determine spp. eggs. The selected measurements to be included in the PCA were proposed for the first time in the present work, as far as we know, as we could not find previous studies reporting standardized parameters.