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Seasonal variation in infestations by ixodids on Siberian chipmunks: effects of host age, sex, and birth season

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Abstract

In mammalian hosts, macroparasite aggregation is highly heterogeneous over space and time and among individuals. While the exact causes of this heterogeneity remain unclear, it has mainly been attributed to individual differences in exposure and susceptibility. Although some extrinsic (e.g., parasite availability) and intrinsic (e.g., sex or age) factors are well known to affect infestation patterns, the joint and possibly interacting effects of these factors are poorly understood. Here, we study the infestation of hard ticks (mainly Ixodes ricinus) in a small rodent, the Siberian chipmunk (Tamias sibiricus), introduced to an oak-hornbeam forest in France. We investigate the seasonal variation in infestation according to the sex, age, birth season (spring-born or summer-born), and body weight of individual hosts while controlling for interannual variability. During the 10-year study period, 3421 tick count events were recorded involving 1017 chipmunks monitored by the capture-mark-recapture procedure. Our results reveal a male-biased parasitism in the Siberian chipmunk, which is not consistent among individuals born in different seasons. This sex bias is observed among spring-born juveniles from July to the beginning of hibernation. For adults, this difference becomes apparent along the reproduction period (May–September) for summer-born adults only. These complex interactions between sex, age, and birth season suggest overall that the seasonal variation of tick load is critically linked to the reproductive behavior of this small ground sciurid.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the National Forests Office (Office National des Forêts, France) for the financial support and for allowing fieldwork in the site ‘La Faisanderie’ (Forest of Sénart, France). This work was also funded by the Conseil Régional d’Ile-de-France, the Conseil Général des Hauts-de-Seine and the Ministère de l’Ecologie, du Développement durable et de l’Energie (MEDDE). We are thankful to J. Marmet for her contribution in the mark-recapture monitoring and tick counts from 2005 to 2007.

Compliance with ethical standards

All procedures performed in studies involving animals were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional ethics committee at the MNHN (#6810 Comité Cuvier) at which the studies were conducted.

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  1. Centre d’Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation (CESCO UMR 7204), Sorbonne Universités, MNHN, CNRS, UPMC, CP51, 57 rue Cuvier, 75005, Paris, France

    Christie Le Coeur, Alexandre Robert, Benoît Pisanu & Jean-Louis Chapuis

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  1. Christie Le Coeur
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  2. Alexandre Robert
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Correspondence to Christie Le Coeur.

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Le Coeur, C., Robert, A., Pisanu, B. et al. Seasonal variation in infestations by ixodids on Siberian chipmunks: effects of host age, sex, and birth season. Parasitol Res 114, 2069–2078 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-015-4391-5

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