Characterizing the Parasite Community in Local Raccoons, Procyon lotor

The study of parasite communities increases our understanding of host-parasite interactions and improves our ability to predict and prevent zoonotic infections. Raccoons, Procyon lotor, are abundant, in close contact with humans, and serve as hosts to potentially dangerous parasites. Here we aim to describe the parasite community of raccoons in the Santa Barbara area and explore the relationship between host location and parasite presence. We examined the gut contents of 92 raccoons and identified 12 species of parasites belonging to 4 major taxonomic groups: Trematoda, Cestoda, Nematoda and Acanthocephala. Of the 92 raccoons, 98% were infected with at least one parasite, and 91% were infected with the zoonotic raccoon roundworm, Baylisascaris procyonis. Parasites displayed an aggregated distribution in host raccoons: majority of the hosts had few to no worms and some hosts contained the majority of the parasites. Although raccoon roundworm is present throughout Santa Barbara, other parasites such as acanthocephalans appear to be restricted to predominantly coastal areas. These results improve our understanding of local raccoon parasite communities and provide a first step towards a predictive model of parasite occurrence.