A large number of arthropods are associated with sloths. These include biting and blood-sucking flies such as mosquitoes and sandflies, triatomine bugs, lice, ticks and mites. The sloth’s fur forms a micro-ecozone inhabited by green algae and hundreds of insects. Sloths have a highly specific community of commensal beetles, mites and moths.[1]
Species of sloths recorded to host arthropods include:[1]
- Pale-throated three-toed sloth Bradypus tridactylus
- Brown three-toed sloth Bradypus variegatus
- Linnaeus's two-toed sloth Choloepus didactylus
The large variety of arthropods associated with sloths comprise two distinct feeding guilds – the haematophagous guild, represented by biting flies, mites, and ticks, and the coprophagous guild which comprises a unique assemblage of moths and beetles which utilize the sloth principally for phoresis and whose larval stages feed and develop in the dung of the host sloth.[2]
- ^ a b Gilmore, D. P.; Da Costa, C. P.; Duarte, D. P. F. (2001). "Sloth biology: an update on their physiological ecology, behavior and role as vectors of arthropods and arboviruses" (PDF). Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research. 34 (1). Ribeirão Preto: 9–25. doi:10.1590/S0100-879X2001000100002. ISSN 1678-4510. PMID 11151024.
- ^ Waage, Jeffrey K.; Best, R.C. (1985). "Arthropod Associates of Sloths". In Montgomery, G. Gene (ed.). The Evolution and Ecology of Armadilloes, Sloths and Vermilinguas. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. pp. 319–322. ISBN 0-87474-649-3. Archived from the original on 29 June 2011. Retrieved 14 Feb 2011.