Rodent-Pika Parasite Spillover in Western North America (original) (raw)

Journal of medical entomology, 2017

Abstract

Competition during the Cenozoic expansion of the Rodentia may have contributed to ecological niche reduction of pikas, which are now increasingly under threat as their habitat degrades under global climate change, while some rodents expand their ranges and overlap with pikas. Range overlap carries the possibility of disease spillover. Contemporary North American pikas are cold-adapted and relegated primarily to alpine environments where they subsist on relatively low-quality herbaceous diet. Yet their evolutionary ancestors were distributed geographically even into the subtropics. Here we examine historical and contemporary records of fleas on pikas (Ochotona princeps) from sites at different elevations in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest. We calculated indices of diversity from each site and spillover fraction, i.e., the proportion of fleas on pikas that have a preference for rodents. Across this range there are four pika specialist flea species, with...

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