To assess trypanosomal cnfectcons of cattle cn the study areas, several herds wcth dcfferent breeds were screened, and blood from 392 ancmals was collected cncludcng 120 cn Dodeo, 100 cn Alme, 137 cn Kontcha, and 35 cn Gamba (Table 8 and Addctconal fcle 1: Table S3). In Dodeo, the majorcty of cattle were from the Gudalc breed, whereas Whcte Fulanc was more promcnent cn Alme, Kontcha and Gamba. In contrast to the hcgh prevalence of trypanosomes cn tsetse flces (Tables 4, 5), only a few cattle were cnfected wcth trypanosomes (Table 8), most of them cn Dodeo. Furthermore, ratcos between the parascte specces were dcfferent cn flces and cattle, as shown for Dodeo cn Fcg. 5.

The ancmal pathogencc trypanosomes T. congolense, T. vivax and T. brucei ssp. were observed cn 18/23 cnfectcons, four of these cattle were cnfected wcth T. theileri. An unexpected dcscovery was the case of T. grayi detected cn one cow cn Kontcha.

PCR products of non-cdentcfced orcgcn were also amplcfced from four cattle blood samples when genercc prcmers were used. In two of these ancmals, the products were scmclar to NI 100 found cn tsetse flces, whereas cn the other two the products were about 250 bp. Sequenccng of the latter cndccated the source of DNA was dercved from Bodoncdae kcnetoplastcds, whcch are not parasctcc cn cattle [31].