Fig 1.
Red dots indicate sampling sites linked to each study province. Livestock from Bayankhongor (BH) and Dundgobi (DU) were sampled at abattoirs in the provincial centres (Bayankhongor town and Mandalgobi town, respectively). Livestock from Tuv province (TV) were sampled at the Nalaikh district abattoir in Ulaanbaatar city (UB, marked by the black dot), located near the administrative border between UB and TV and routinely slaughtering animals from TV. Samples from Umnugobi (UG) were collected at an open-air meat-processing site in Nomgon soum, near the Mongolia–China border. Administrative boundaries were obtained from the geoBoundaries database of political administrative boundaries [39]. Basemap source and download: https://www.geoboundaries.org/countryDownloads.html. geoBoundaries data are licensed under CC BY 4.0 with attribution required. Maps were created in R version 4.5.0.
Table 1.
Distribution of cystic lesions and E. granulosus s.l. isolates by province and host species.
Table 2.
Macroscopic characteristics of cystic lesions and cysts identified with E. granulosus s.l.
Fig 2.
Macroscopic appearance of hydatid cysts collected from livestock.
(A) Typical calcified cyst (opened to show contents), representing the majority of cysts in this study. Example from a sheep liver in Tuv province, ~ 3 cm diameter; (B) Rare fertile cyst containing clear fluid. Large (~5 x 9 cm), firm pulmonary cyst from a goat in Umnugobi province, molecularly confirmed as E. canadensis G6.
Table 3.
Metadata of E. granulosus s.l. cysts successfully genotyped from Mongolian livestock.
Fig 3.
Geographic distribution of mitochondrial COX1 haplotypes (742 bp) at the four sampling sites in Mongolia.
BH – Bayankhongor province, DU – Dundgobi province, TV – Tuv province, UG – Umnugobi province, UB-Ulaanbaatar city. Administrative boundaries were obtained from the geoBoundaries database of political administrative boundaries [39]. Basemap source and download: https://www.geoboundaries.org/countryDownloads.html. geoBoundaries data are licensed under CC BY 4.0 with attribution required. Maps were created in R version 4.5.0.
Fig 4.
Median-Joining haplotype network of the E. granulosus s.l. complex using the mitochondrial COX1 (742 bp) constructed in PopArt v1.7.
Circles represent haplotypes, with size proportional to the number of individuals. Hatch marks show nucleotide substitutions between haplotypes (values >5 are shown numerically). (A) Haplotype sequences are coloured based on collection locations, and (B) haplotype sequences are coloured based on the host animal the parasite was collected from. Detailed information for all COX1 sequences used in this study is provided in S4 and S5 Tables of the Supplementary material.
Table 4.
Summary of previously reported and newly identified Mongolian host records for COX1 haplotypes H1–H5.