Gray wolves as sentinels for the presence of . and other gastrointestinal parasites in France.

Over the past 30 years, the gray wolf population has recovered in France, initially to wolves from Italy passing through the Alps. The population is carefully monitored, but little information is available on their helminth fauna, which includes parasites of public health importance: and . Capitalizing on the availability of 911 fecal samples collected for the noninvasive genetic monitoring of French wolf populations, along with the intestines from 15 dead wolves, the presence of species among others helminth species was evaluated in French wolves. A copro-PCR approach amplifying a large spectrum of parasites was used for fecal samples while intestines were analyzed using SCT. The fecal occurrences of (2.4%) (0.3%), and indeedother parasitic species, are similar to those of other European wolf populations including (7.2%), (2.4%), (2.4%), (1.9%), (0.3%), (0.1%), and (0.1%). The three most abundant species were also found in the intestines. Infections by are in accordance with the overlap of wolf pack areas and sheep breeding pastoral units. However, the wolf does not appear to play a significant role in the lifecycle of . The availability of this opportunistic fecal sampling of wolves in southeastern France means that they can be used as sentinels for the surveillance of in the context of its southward expansion observed in recent years.