Parasite Ecology and the Conservation Biology of Black Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis)

This thesis combines investigations of parasite ecology and rhinoceros conservation biology to advance our understanding and management of the host-parasite relationship for the critically endangered black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis). My central aim was to determine the key influences on parasite abundance within black rhinoceros, investigate the effects of parasitism on black rhinoceros and how they can be measured, and to provide a balanced summary of the advantages and disadvantages of interventions to control parasites within threatened host species. Two intestinal helminth parasites were the primary focus of this study; the strongyle nematodes and an Anoplocephala sp. tapeworm. The non-invasive assessment of parasite abundance within black rhinoceros is challenging due to the rhinoceros’s elusive nature and rarity. Hence, protocols for faecal egg counts (FECs) where defecation could not be observed were tested. This included testing for the impacts of time since defecation on FECs, and whether sampling location within a bolus influenced FECs. Also, the optimum sample size needed to reliably capture the variation in parasite abundance on a population level was estimated. To identify the key influences on parasite abundance, the black rhinoceros meta-population in South Africa presented an extraordinary and fortuitous research opportunity. Translocation and reintroduction have created multiple populations from the same two source populations, providing a variety of comparable populations with the same host-parasite relationship. I applied my population-level faecal sampling and egg count protocol to collect 160 samples from 18 black rhinoceros populations over two summer sampling periods between 2010 and 2012. I test hypotheses for the influence of a variety of ecological and abiotic factors on parasite abundance. To test for the influence of individual-level host characteristics on parasite abundance, such as age and sex, I collected rectal faecal samples at t