Trypanosoma cruzi belongs to the subkingdom Protozoa and to the subspecies A. stercoria, because the parasite develops its infectious stage in the insect’s digestive tract. They are flagellar organisms that have one nucleus and an organelle, the kinetoplast, that gives rise to one mitochondrion and mitochondrial DNA.
T. cruzi lives one stage of its life in the blood and/or tissues of vertebrate hosts and during other stages they live in the digestive tracts of invertebrate vectors as temporary hosts.