Endoparasites observed within invertebrates used as live food items for captive wild birds: Overview and potential risks

To monitor and evaluate potential risks to birds’ health, invertebrate species that have been used as live food items had their body contents searched for endoparasites. The contents of approximately 10,000 invertebrates were analyzed. A principal component analysis was performed to study the relationship between the presence/absence of endoparasites and the characteristics of the invertebrates. In most of them, including the species preferred by birds such as caterpillars, waxworms, mealworms, most grasshoppers, and spiders, no organism was identified. Such findings suggest a low potential for parasite transmission associated with its consumption by birds. Although they had unknown or even unlikely implications for the birds’ health, gregarines, oxyurides Leidynema sp., and digenetic trematodes Monolecithotrema sp. were found in samples from woodlice, cockroaches, and centipedes, respectively. The only avian parasites observed in this study were Heterakis gallinarum in samples from earthworms and Acuaria spiralis from woodlice. Suggestively, soil invertebrates showed a higher prevalence of endoparasites and may represent a higher potential risk in comparison to the other categories of invertebrates sampled herein. Detritivory and collected origin were also explanatory variables related to the presence of endoparasites in the current study.