Abstract
During the course of parasitic disease infestations, parasite population sizes change at both individual host (infrapopulation) and host population (metapopulation) levels. However, most studies only report epidemiological values for specific locations and times. In this study we analysed the dynamics of several Sarcoptes scabiei infrapopulations from experimentally infested Iberian ibex, Capra pyrenaica. We obtained mite counts by digesting small skin biopsies, which we compared with indices obtained from histopathological analyses performed on adjacent skin biopsies. We obtained the finite growth rate and the daily growth rate for the mite infrapopulations: mean ± SE = 11.53 ± 10.17 and 0.10 ± 0.08 mites/day, respectively. Mite counts derived from skin sample digestion did not correlate with the histological mite indices obtained from adjacent skin biopsies. At a metapopulational level, both indices of mite abundance were modelled using GLMMs and the factors influencing their variation are analysed and discussed. Our results suggest that mites are not distributed uniformly over the whole area of the skin lesion. Therefore, direct diagnoses of mange and mite counts could be inaccurate if only small skin samples are used.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spanish Government) (projects CGL2012-40043-C02-01, CGL2012-40043-C02-02 and CGL2016-80543-P). The authors’ research activities are partially funded by the PAIDI, Junta de Andalucía (RNM 118 group). José Espinosa was funded by a PhD Grant (Grant Number ECC/1402/2013: BES-2013-063931). We would like to thank the Consejería de Medio Ambiente de la Junta de Andalucía and in particular the staff of Sierra Nevada Natural Space (SNNS) for their logistical support, and the staff of the Sierra de Huétor Natural Park for the transfer of their experimental facilities. Special thanks are also due to the park wardens and fieldworkers in the SNNS and, in particular, to Apolo Sánchez, José López, Isidro Puga, Elías Martínez, Francisco Felipe and Antonio Rodríguez for their professional and personal involvement in the study. We are also grateful to Manolo Herrera for the maintenance of the ibex and the facilities during the experimental phase, and the contributions of the SCSVNP to the study. The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
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The Commission on Ethics in Animal Experimentation of the University of Jaén, the Consejería de Agricultura, Pesca y Medio Ambiente of the Andalusian Government (Junta de Andalucía), the SNNS, and the Ministry of Economy and Competitivity (Spanish Government) all gave their approval for the performance of this study.
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Castro, I., Espinosa, J., Granados, J.E. et al. Characterizing the growth of Sarcoptes scabiei infrapopulations. Exp Appl Acarol 76, 41–52 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10493-018-0287-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10493-018-0287-2