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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Heuristic Mining of Hierarchical Genotypes and Accessory Genome Loci in Bacterial Populations
Published on: December 7, 2021
Host-shaped segregation of the Cryptosporidium parvum multilocus genotype repertoire
A Grinberg1, N Lopez-Villalobos, W Pomroy
1Massey University, Institute of Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences, Palmerston North, New Zealand. A.Grinberg@massey.ac.nz
Abstract:
Cattle are among the major reservoirs of Cryptosporidium parvum in nature. However, the relative contribution of C. parvum oocysts originating from cattle to human disease burden is difficult to assess, as various transmission pathways -- including the human to human route -- can co-occur. In this study, multilocus genotype richness of representative samples of human and bovine C. parvum are compared statistically using analytical rarefaction and non-parametric taxonomic richness estimators. Results suggest that in the time and space frames underlying the analysed data, humans were infected with significantly wider spectra of C. parvum genotypes than cattle, and consequently, a significant fraction of human infections may not have originated from the regional bovine reservoirs. This study provides statistical support to the emerging idea of the existence of distinct anthroponotic C. parvum cycles that do not involve cattle.
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