Data from: A combined parasitological-molecular approach for non-invasive characterization of parasitic nematode communities in wild hosts

Most hosts are concurrently or sequentially infected with multiple parasites; thus, fully understanding interactions between individual parasite species and their hosts depends on accurate characterization of the parasite community. For parasitic nematodes, noninvasive methods for obtaining quantitative, species-specific infection data in wildlife are often unreliable. Consequently, characterization of gastrointestinal nematode communities of wild hosts has largely relied on lethal sampling to isolate and enumerate adult worms directly from the tissues of dead hosts. The necessity of lethal sampling severely restricts the host species that can be studied, the adequacy of sample sizes to assess diversity, the geographic scope of collections and the research questions that can be addressed. Focusing on gastrointestinal nematodes of wild African buffalo, we evaluated whether accurate characterization of nematode communities could be made using a noninvasive technique that combined conventional parasitological approaches with molecular barcoding. To establish the reliability of this new method, we compared estimates of gastrointestinal nematode abundance, prevalence, richness and community composition derived from lethal sampling with estimates derived from our noninvasive approach. Our noninvasive technique accurately estimated total and species-specific worm abundances, as well as worm prevalence and community composition when compared to the lethal sampling method. Importantly, the rate of parasite species discovery was similar for both methods, and only a modest number of barcoded larvae (n = 10) were needed to capture key aspects of parasite community composition. Overall, this new noninvasive strategy offers numerous advantages over lethal sampling methods for studying nematode–host interactions in wildlife and can readily be applied to a range of study systems.Adult nematode dataFile includes species-specific counts of adult Trichostrongyle nematode specimens, strongyle fecal egg count (eggs/gram feces), capture date, and the GPS coordinates where each buffalo host was captured. These data were used to generate results reported in Figure 1a and Figure 2. An explanation of how these data were generated is included in the publication.Nematode type specimens and reference sequencesFile includes nematode type specimen ITS-2 sequences, US National Parasite Collection accession numbers, and GenBank accession numbers. These data were used to determine the species identity of larval ITS-2 sequences. An explanation of how these data were generated is included in the publication.Adult-larvae matched nematode samplesFile includes species-specific counts of larvae identified using ITS-2 sequences, species-specific counts of adult Trichostrongyle nematode specimens, strongyle fecal egg count (eggs/gram feces), capture date, and the GPS coordinates where each buffalo host was captured. This is the data set used to generate comparisons between larvae and adult sampling methods, Figure 1b & 1c, and Figure 3a. An explanation of how these data were generated is included in the publication.Sequences for adult-matched nematode larvaeFile includes the ITS-2 sequences for each larvae from hosts with matching adult nematode specimens. This is the data set used to generate the larval species-specific count data listed in datafile "Adult-larvae matched nematode samples.csv". An explanation of how these data were generated is included in the publication.Additional nematode larvae for bootstrappingFile includes larval species-specific nematode data from additional non-lethally sampled buffalo. This is the data set used to generate Figure 2 and Figure 3b & 3c. An explanation of how these data were generated is included in the publication