Materials and methods

2.1 Search approach

Three databases (PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus) were searched for stud­ies published between 2000 and 2020. The search terms were “dog AND parasite AND Argentina”; “dog AND parasite AND Chile”; and “dog AND parasite AND Uruguay”.

The Google Scholar search in particular returned a large number of results, of which the first 700 titles were read (and in some cases the abstract); however, it was observed that after the first 200 no results were found that met the search requirements.

2.2 Paper assortment

The studies to be included were identified independently by two reviewers, and were confirmed by a third reviewer following standardised methodology [45]. The studies included met the following criteria: (1) full text articles available online; (2) published between 2000 and 2020; (3) peer-reviewed, original papers published either in English or Spanish; (4) cross-sectional studies that assessed the prevalence of any intestinal helminth parasite of dogs in Argentina, Chile or Uruguay; (5) studies that detected parasite infection in faeces using at least one parasitological, serological and/or molecular method; (6) studies that reported sample sizes, and the prevalence of each parasite species. Reviews and case reports were excluded. The following data were extracted from each article: authors, publication year, country, localities (coordinates), type of locality (rural/urban), sample size, detection method, prevalence of each parasite, number of parasite species.

2.3 Parasite distribution

The distribution maps were constructed using the Free and Open Source Geo­graphic Information System (QGis system). The coordinates for the site locations were taken from the selected works or were completed using Google Earth. The prevalence values shown on the maps were obtained from the studies included in the bibliographic review. The map of South America was obtained from shape files from Institute Geografico Nacional [46].

2.4 Statistical analysis

Spearmans rank Correlation Tests were performed to analyse the relation between richness, with sample size and latitude. All sites with richness = 1 were excluded, since they searched for only one parasite.

3.