Fleas and bites in armadillo’s bones.

作者

Alan Boyde¹ , David Mills¹ , Agustín-Manuel Abba² , María-Cecilia Ezquiaga²

1. Queen Mary University of London
2. Centro de Estudios Parasitológicos y de Vectores

会议/活动

3rd International Workshop on Insect Bio-Inspired Technologies, November 2022 (Edinburgh, United Kingdom)

海报摘要

Females of the flea Tunga perforans penetrate the epidermis over an armadillo’s carapace, are fertilised by males, when their abdomen swells enormously to form a ~3mm diameter discoid ‘neosome’ which perforates bone and forms a cavity. We used 3D Back-Scattered Electron mode Scanning Electron Microscopy (BSE-SEM) and X-ray MicroTomography (XMT, μCT).to examine bony lesions in the greater hairy armadillo (Chaetophractus villosus) and southern three-banded armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus). Lesions involved both sutures between adjacent bones and their central regions. The cavities show resorption pit complexes typical of those made by osteoclasts. They show numerous extra blood vessel canals. They eventually repair by infilling with new bone. We conclude that the Tunga perforans neosome creates a local host inflammatory response which causes the bone resorption, creating the space in which it can grow. Fleas are known to inject anticoagulant(s) and these can cause local osteoporosis.

关键词

Bone, Osteoporosis, Osteoarthritis, Trace fossil, Tunga perforans, Osteoderm

研究领域

Anatomy and Physiology, Biological Sciences, Medical Imaging, Zoology, Veterinary and Animal Sciences

参考文献

1. Terkawi, M.A., Matsumae, G., Shimizu, T. et al. (2022). Interplay between inflammation and pathological bone resorption: insights into recent mechanisms and pathways in related diseases for future perspectives. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 23, 1786. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms23031786.
2. Ezquiaga, M.C. (2013). Estudios parasitológicos en Dasypodidae (Mammalia, Xenarthra) de Argentina: El valor de la diversidad en la interpretación de las asociaciones parásito-hospedador-ambiente. Doctoral thesis. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10915/26116.

基金

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补充材料

暂无数据

附加信息

利益冲突

No competing interests were disclosed.

数据可用性声明

The datasets generated during and / or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

知识共享许可协议

Copyright © 2023 Boyde et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.