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Nowadays, wildlife is one of the most important sources of zoonoses, and it is a major concern for public health. Nevertheless, little is known about the role of wildlife as a reservoir and source of infectious diseases in the past. South America presents a wide diversity of wildlife. In the south of the continent, Argentina shelters a large diversity of neotropical carnivores. Although the paleoparasitological studies on carnivores have been increasing in southern Argentina, most of the efforts have been focused in a handful of sites located in western Patagonia. In this paper, two coprolites of felid found in Cueva Galpón, an initial late Holocene mortuary site from northeast Patagonia (Argentina), were studied for paleoparasitological purposes. Samples were processed by rehydration and homogenization, filtered and processed by spontaneous sedimentation. The samples were assigned to Puma concolor (puma) or Panthera onca (jaguar). Microscopic observations revealed that both coprolites were positive for parasite remains. High parasite richness was observed. Six nematodes, one cestode, and one coccidian morphotypes were reported. This is the first time that Gnathostoma sp. and Spirocerca sp. were recovered from holocenic times from Patagonia. This finding implies that some diseases such as taeniasis, spirocercosis, gnathostomosis, ascariasis, and coccidiosis could be present in holocenic wildlife from Patagonia prior to the Spanish colonization and domestic animal introduction. The overall results suggest that felids could have played a role as reservoirs and source of some parasitic species, some of which are zoonotic. Therefore, this animal could have entailed a risk agent for human health in the site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the present paper is to recognize and reconstruct, from the analysis of pollen recovered from sedimentary cores, the predominant plant communities and their variations during the Holocene in Corrientes Argentina, in order to infer changes in climatic conditions, vegetation and paleoenvironmental evolution in the northeast of Argentina. For this study, lakes located in the central region of Corrientes province were selected, comprising part of the western margin of the Iberá Wetland. The palynological analysis of the paleocommunities shows, in a first stage of the mid Holocene, the predominance of marsh grasslands and hygrophilous communities that indicates humid to sub‐humid environmental conditions. In a later stage of the mid Holocene, the paleocommunities show a characteristic association of wetlands, which together with the presence of Typha sp., would indicate sub‐humid to humid conditions and waterlogged or flooded soils with slow‐moving water. For the late Holocene, the paleocommunities show, initially, the presence of a grass‐dominated herbaceous steppe, indicating environmental disturbances, which in the fossil record could reflect the combination of intense wind action under a dry climate. In a later stage, the frequency and variety of species characteristic of humid environments increase, dominated by marshy‐herbaceous species, in addition to the development of the hygrophilous forest. Consequently, since the mid Holocene, the main climate factors responsible for the observed changes in wetland conditions were the location and intensity of the Atlantic and Pacific anticyclones in addition to changes in sea level. These forces mainly affected the distribution of precipitation, causing significant changes in the vegetation communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]