Eothenomys miletus

Li, Bei, Guo, Xian-Guo, Ren, Tian-Guang, Peng, Pei-Ying, Song, Wen-Yu, Lv, Yan, Yin, Peng-Wu, Liu, Zhe, Liu, Xin-Hang & Qian, Ti-Jun, 2022, Analysis on infestation and related ecology of chigger mites on large Chinese voles (Eothenomys miletus) in five provincial regions of Southwest China, International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife 19, pp. 169-179 : 173

3.1. Infestation of E. miletus with chiggers

A total of 2661 large Chinese voles ( E. miletus ) were captured in 32 of 91 sampled sites ( Fig. 1 , Appendix), and 52331 chiggers were collected from E. miletus . And 52261 of 52331 collected chiggers were identified as 185 species and 13 genera in the family Trombiculidae ( Table 1). The remaining 70 chiggers were unidentified because of the absence of key characters (broken body), key characters not clear due to debris, or suspected new species. The unidentified 70 chiggers were not included in the statistical calculation of the present study. The overall prevalence (Pm), mean abundance (MA) and mean intensity (MI) of E. miletus (host) with chiggers were 53.96%, 19.64 chiggers/per host and 36.39 chiggers/per host respectively. The prevalence and mean abundance of chiggers on male hosts (Pm = 56.25%, MA = 21.67) were higher than those on female hosts (Pm = 51.23%, MA = 17.09) (P <0.05). The mean intensity of chiggers on male hosts (MI = 38.52) was also higher than that on female hosts (MI = 33.37), but without statistical significance (P> 0.05) ( Table 2). The species similarity of chiggers was moderately similar between different sexes of the hosts, E. miletus (J = 0.63).

Figures

Fig. 1. Investigation sites (n = 91) in the five provincial regions of Southwest China between 2001 and 2019 (The sites marked “▴” were newly increased sites after 2013 and those marked “*” were the sites where large Chinese voles, E. miletus, were captured. The name abbreviations of the investigation sites were shown in “Appendix”).