This study aims to assess the diversity of campylobacteria (Campylobacter and Arcobacter) in human fecal samples from patients with diarrhea (n = 140) and asymptomatic controls (n = 116) in Chile, using a combination of traditional culture and molecular methods. The culture methods detected campylobacteria in 10.7% of the patients with diarrhea and in 1.7% of the controls. In contrast, the molecular methods detected campylobacteria more often than the traditional culture, with a prevalence of 25.7% and 5.2%, respectively. The traditional methods only recovered the species Campylobacter jejuni, Campylobacter coli, and Arcobacter butzleri, whereas the molecular methods additionally detected the emergent species Campylobacter concisus and Campylobacter ureolyticus. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.