Abstract
Chiggers are a group of ectoparasites and they are the vector of scrub typhus. Although the Ryukyu mouse (Mus caroli) is a common species of rodent in some outdoor habitats, few studies are about the mouse itself and its ectoparasites. To date, there has been no specific report on chiggers of M. caroli. Based on the field investigation in southwest China from 2001 to 2019, this paper reported the infestation and distribution of chiggers on M. caroli for the first time. Among the 91 sites investigated, 263 Ryukyu mice were captured at 18 sites, and 678 chiggers were collected from the mice. The collected chiggers were identified to be one family, two subfamilies, six genera, and 16 species with relatively low species diversity. The overall infestation prevalence (PM), mean abundance (MA), and mean intensity (MI) were PM = 27.38%, MA = 2.58 chiggers/per mouse, and MI = 9.42 chiggers/per mouse respectively. The dominant chigger species are Walchia ewingi and W. micropelta with a total constituent ratio of Cr = 94.10% (638/678), and they were of aggregated distribution among different individuals of the host M. caroli. The distribution of two dominant chigger species seemed to be mutually independent with the association coefficient V ≈ 0 (p < 0.001). The infestation (PM, MA, and MI) of M. caroli with chiggers greatly fluctuated in different geographical landscapes, altitudes, and latitudes with an obvious environmental heterogeneity. The male and adult M. caroli harbored much more chigger mites with significantly higher infestations (PM, MA and MI) than the female and juvenile mice. The theoretical curve of species abundance distribution of the chigger mite community on M. caroli was fitted by Preston lognormal distribution model with fitting goodness R2 = 0.77. Based on the iChao1 formula, the expected total number of chigger species on the mice was estimated to be 24 species.
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Data availability
The experimental data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to the following people who contributed to the field investigations and laboratory work: Yun-Ji Zou, Zong-Yang Luo, Qiao-Hua Wang, Rong Fan, Cheng-Fu Zhao, Zhi-Wei Zhang, Ke-Yu Mao, Tian-Guang Ren, Wen-Ge Dong, Yong Zhang, Cong-Hua Gao, Nan Zhao, Jian-Chang He, Guo-Li Li, Yan-Liu Li, Xue-Song He, Chang-Ji Pu, De-Cai Ouyang, some colleagues, and college students. The present study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Agreement No. 82160400 and the Major Science and Technique Programs in Yunnan Province (No. 202102AA310055-X) to Xian-Guo Guo, and the Expert Workstation for Dao-Chao Jin in Dali Prefecture. We would like to express our sincere thanks to the above financial support.
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Conceptualization, funding acquisition, project administration, resources, supervision, validation, and writing—review and editing, X.-G.G.; methodology, funding acquisition and supervision, D.-C.J.; data curation, formal analysis, software, visualization and writing—original draft, Y.G.; investigation, methodology, Y.L.; P.-W.Y. and W.-Y.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Guo, Y., Guo, XG., Song, WY. et al. Infestation and distribution of chiggers on Ryukyu mouse in southwest China. Biologia 79, 437–447 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11756-023-01529-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11756-023-01529-w