WIKIMEDIA, SCOTT BAUER/USDAAlthough the malarial parasite Plasmodium is found in five mammalian Old World orders, it has been considered absent in deer (Cervidae) and New World mammals in North America since at least the 1960s. But according to a study published last week (February 5) in Science Advances, up to 25 percent of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in the U.S. may in fact be infected.
“It’s a parasite that has been hidden in the most iconic game animal in the United States,” said study coauthor Ellen Martinsen of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in a press release. “I just stumbled across it.”
Martinsen made the discovery while collecting mosquitoes at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, searching for malarial parasites that could infect birds. When she discovered another Plasmodium species, P. odocoilei, in a mosquito that also contained white-tail deer blood, she and her colleagues began a large-scale screening of both captive and wild ungulates across the country.
The researchers found evidence to suggest that the parasite infects around one-quarter of the white-tailed deer population, but not other ungulate species. They also showed that the parasite is generally present only at very ...
