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Associations between innate immune function and ectoparasites in wild rodent hosts

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Abstract

Immune function is an important component of host fitness, and high investment in immunity should occur when the benefits outweigh the costs, such as when risk of parasitism is high. We sampled two rodent hosts, white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus), and prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster), and their tick, flea, and mite ectoparasites. A bacterial killing assay was used to measure the host’s innate immune function. We hypothesized that classes of hosts (species, sexes, or age classes) with overall higher tick burdens would have a higher innate immune function as an evolutionary response to historically greater exposure. We hypothesized a weaker relationship between the fleas and mites and immune function because of high host specificity in fleas and the absence of known vector function in North American mites. Ectoparasites were significantly overdispersed on hosts. In accordance with our hypothesis, Peromyscus that had higher tick burdens also exhibited significantly higher bacterial killing ability compared to Microtus. There was no significant difference in total flea burden between rodent species and no relationship with bacterial killing ability. Microtus had higher burdens of mites in each order than Peromyscus, and female rodents had higher mite burdens than males. The benefits of maintaining high levels of innate immune factors appear to be greater than the energetic costs for Peromyscus compared to Microtus.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank J. Kagemann, A. Avalos, and W. Snydermann for their help with rodent trapping and ectoparasite collection, and Dr. J. Whitaker and Dr. R. Pinger for ectoparasite identification. We thank Dr. E. Chester and Dr. M. Ruíz for their guidance in optimizing the bacterial killing assay and for helpful discussions of the results. Funding was provided through an Indiana Academy of Science Senior Research Grant and an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (award no. 1110514) to ER, NSF-NIH grant DEB-03268742 to KC, an Indiana Metabolomics and Cytomics Initiative of Indiana University (IU) grant awarded to KC, and an IU Center for Research in Environmental Sciences grant awarded to KC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Indiana University, 1001 E 3rd St, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA

    Evelyn C. Rynkiewicz, Gregory E. Demas & Keith Clay

  2. Department of Life Sciences, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

    Hadas Hawlena

  3. Department of Biology, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, USA

    Lance A. Durden

  4. Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Michael W. Hastriter

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  1. Evelyn C. Rynkiewicz
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  2. Hadas Hawlena
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  5. Gregory E. Demas
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Correspondence to Evelyn C. Rynkiewicz.

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Rynkiewicz, E.C., Hawlena, H., Durden, L.A. et al. Associations between innate immune function and ectoparasites in wild rodent hosts. Parasitol Res 112, 1763–1770 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-013-3335-1

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