ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2015
Ectoparasites and fitness of female Columbian ground squirrels.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Experimental removal of nematode parasites increases growth, sprint speed, and mating success in brown anole lizards.Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology · 2022Article
- Field Evidence of Mosquito Population Regulation by a Gregarine Parasite.Journal of medical entomology · 2021Article
- Costs and drivers of helminth parasite infection in wild female baboons.The Journal of animal ecology · 2019Article
- Siphonaptera of Canada.ZooKeys · 2019Review
- The effects of food and parasitism on reproductive performance of a wild rodent.Ecology and evolution · 2018Article
- Effects of parasitism on host reproductive investment in a rodent-flea system: host litter size matters.Parasitology research · 2017Article
- Primate reinfection with gastrointestinal parasites: behavioural and physiological predictors of parasite acquisition.Animal behaviour · 2016Article
- Time budget, oxygen consumption and body mass responses to parasites in juvenile and adult wild rodents.Parasites & vectors · 2016Article
- The sociality-health-fitness nexus: synthesis, conclusions and future directions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Review
- Sociality and health: impacts of sociality on disease susceptibility and transmission in animal and human societies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Parasites play an important role in the evolution of host traits via natural selection, coevolution and sexually selected ornaments used in mate choice. These evolutionary scenarios assume fitness costs for hosts. To test this assumption, we conducted an ectoparasite removal experiment in free-living Columbian ground squirrels (Urocittelus columbianus) in four populations over three years. Adult females were randomly chosen to be either experimentally treated with anti-parasite treatments (spot-on solution and flea powder, N = 61) or a sham treatment (control, N = 44). We expected that experimental females would show better body condition, increased reproductive success and enhanced survival. Contrary to our expectations, body mass was not significantly different between treatments at mating, birth of litter or weaning of young. Further, neither number nor size of young at weaning differed significantly between the two treatments. Survival to the next spring for adult females and juveniles was not significantly different between experimental and control treatments. Finally, annual fitness was not affected by the treatments. We concluded that females and their offspring were able compensate for the presence of ectoparasites, suggesting little or no fitness costs of parasites for females in the different colonies and during the years of our experiments.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.