Poop and Parasites: Exploring Parasitism in Antiquity Using Coprolites from La Cueva de los Muertos Chiquitos

Johnica Morrow Author

03/03/2016 Added

226 Plays

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Fourth Place in the Doctorate category of the 2016 School of Natural Resources Elevator Speech Contest. Johnica is a doctoral candidate seeking a degree in Natural Resource Sciences with a specialization in Applied Ecology.

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[00:00:01.072]Poop and parasites.
[00:00:02.535]Two things that I love despite what other people think.
[00:00:05.391]Though not always appropriate dinner conversation,
[00:00:07.620]poop does provide a wealth of information regarding diet
[00:00:10.592]and disease.
[00:00:11.729]This is as true for what many of you made earlier today
[00:00:14.191]as it was for people thousands of years ago.
[00:00:16.861]My dissertation focuses on retrieving parasite data
[00:00:19.485]from 1300-year-old paleo poops known as coprolites
[00:00:22.619]like the one in the middle of this slide.
[00:00:24.337]By analyzing coprolites, we're able to reconstruct
[00:00:27.217]that diets and patterns of parasite infections
[00:00:29.495]that occurred in pre-history.
[00:00:31.215]This allows us to better understand the origins
[00:00:33.472]of human parasite associations that are still relevant
[00:00:36.704]to people in the modern world.
[00:00:38.738]The coprolites that I work with come from a cave in Mexico
[00:00:41.329]known as La Cueva de los Muertos Chiquitos.
[00:00:43.953]This cave was home to hundreds of coprolites
[00:00:46.182]that were sealed beneath adobe floors,
[00:00:48.244]making for some of the best-preserved parasite evidence
[00:00:50.891]in the world.
[00:00:51.866]Now that is the kind of high-quality crap
[00:00:53.984]that we archaeoparasitologists dream about.
[00:00:56.380]The diversity of parasites recovered
[00:00:57.889]from this site is amazing.
[00:00:59.756]Starting at 12 o'clock, we have the egg of physaloptera,
[00:01:02.514]which is a dog parasite.
[00:01:04.019]Moving clockwise, we see a human whipworm egg.
[00:01:06.527]And down here, we see toxascaris,
[00:01:08.254]another parasite associated with dogs
[00:01:10.149]that can infect humans from time to time.
[00:01:12.183]Down at six o'clock, we see
[00:01:13.576]the results of a molecular test that looks for parasites
[00:01:16.195]that don't leave behind eggs,
[00:01:17.755]ad if you ignore the two control wells on the top left,
[00:01:20.709]every place that you see yellow represents
[00:01:22.769]a positive sample for a diarrhea-inducing parasite
[00:01:25.561]known as cryptosporidium parvum.
[00:01:27.929]Moving along, we see a tapeworm egg.
[00:01:30.381]The green egg is that of a human pinworm.
[00:01:32.443]And this last egg up at the top is that of a fluke.
[00:01:35.006]Each of these parasites has a distinct lifecycle
[00:01:37.626]involving different hosts and modes of transmission.
[00:01:41.330]By recovering parasite data, we're able to infer patterns
[00:01:44.370]of human behaviors.
[00:01:46.041]For example, the dog parasites that we mentioned
[00:01:48.243]tell us that people had very close associations
[00:01:50.722]with their dogs at this site.
[00:01:52.338]And the results of the molecular tell us
[00:01:53.684]that lots of people had diarrhea.
[00:01:55.914]The pinworm eggs present at this site,
[00:01:57.780]like the green one on this slide,
[00:01:59.480]were so prevalent among the coprolites,
[00:02:01.263]that we know virtually everyone at this site
[00:02:03.297]was infected.
[00:02:04.690]Female pinworms crawl out of the anus at night
[00:02:07.616]and lay their itchy little eggs on the perianal folds,
[00:02:10.625]so you know, as soon as the sun set on
[00:02:12.353]La Cueva de los Muertos Chiquitos,
[00:02:14.470]everybody was either scratching or dealing with diarrhea.
[00:02:17.535]It may not have sounded like much of a party for them,
[00:02:20.154]but it provides us with lots of information,
[00:02:21.882]1300 years later.
[00:02:23.749]As we continue to collect parasite data
[00:02:25.448]from this site, we'll be able to gain a picture
[00:02:27.510]of what life was like for people who left behind
[00:02:30.408]no written records, only ancient nuggets of information
[00:02:33.269]regarding what they ate and what was eating that.

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Poop and Parasites: Exploring Parasitism in Antiquity Using Coprolites from La Cueva de los Muertos Chiquitos

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