High prevalence of Trypanosoma vegrandis in bats from Western Australia

• First report of Trypanosoma vegrandis in bats.
• Morphological and molecular analysis.
• High prevalence of T. vegrandis in bats.
• Bats may play an important role in epidemiology.

The present study describes the first report of Trypanosoma vegrandis in bats using morphology and sequence analysis of the 18S rRNA gene. The PCR prevalence of T. vegrandis in bats was 81.8% (18/22). The high prevalence of T. vegrandis in the present study suggests that bats may play an important role in the epidemiology of T. vegrandis in Australia. T. vegrandis appears to be geographically dispersed, has a wide distribution in Australia and low levels of host specificity.

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