ABSTRACT
Streblidae flies are found exclusively on bats and are distributed throughout the world, with a high richness of flies and host in Brazil. However, knowledge about the ecological aspects of these relationships is limited to descriptions of the associations. The aim of this work was to characterize the community of ectoparasites flies and their possible association patterns in a peri-urban area of Cerrado. Bats were captured between February and July 2011, with a sample effort of 9 504 h.m2. Ectoparasites were collected and identified. The parasite-host relationship was determined using index such as prevalence, average infestation intensity, and specificity. We captured 161 bats of seven species, with 29.81% (n = 48) that were infested. We found 83 flies of six species of Streblidae, with two accidental associations and eight non-accidental associations. The highest prevalence and intensity of infestation were found for the association between Carollia perspicillata (Linnaeus, 1758) and Trichobius joblingi Wenzel, 1966. Artibeus planirostris (Spix, 1823) also presented high prevalence rates, while Artibeus lituratus (Olfers, 1818) and Sturnira lilium (E. Geoffroy, 1810) had low infestation prevalence. Four species of Streblidae were considered monoxenic and two oligoxenic, which is indicated by the analysis of specificity, which demonstrates the predominance of monoxenic species already reported in other works.
KEYWORDS
Host; monoxenic; parasitism; Phyllostomidae