3.5.4 Flea biased parasitism on rodent’s sex and weight
We observed that sex biased fleas infestation was frequently recorded on
male rodents than females; male rodents were significantly increasing
flea infestation load. A study conducted by Moore and Wilson (2002) has
shown that arthropods (especially sticking ectoparasites) obviously
exhibit male-biased parasitism because most of them wait for the host to
visit their area rather than them searching for the host. An animal that
explore many habitats and visit many ecological niches has high
probability to encounter many parasites frequently compared to less
explorative animal with small movements within its ecological niche. Our
result is arguably with different studies (Gaines and McClenaghan, 1980;
Bitam et al ., 2010 and Buchholz and Dick, 2017) which also
observed a similar relationship with males having high flea infestation
than female because of their large home range and wide dispersal area as
compared to female rodents. The little difference in weight between male
and female rodents obtained in this study could or could not influence
flea sex biased parasitism on rodents. Sex biased parasitism should not
be taken as a general rule since in other study elsewhere it was found
that in some host-parasite relationship both male and female rodent
hosts were found equally infested with fleas (Wirsing et al .,
2007; Kiffner et al ., 2011)
Similarly, weight of rodents in the general community was significantly
influencing the increase in abundance of fleas. Under natural phenomenon
weight of rodents is equivalent to the size and age of respective rodent
specie. The change of these parameters affects the physiological and
behavioral status of the individual rodent in particular ecological
habitat whereby the increase of these parameters could facilitate
rodents to become more explorative with large home range and dispersion
in searching for food, mates or better shelter and in the meanwhile they
keep increasing the frequency of encountering many fleas.
Correspondingly, large rodents are easy target for ectoparasites
compared to small one, they can also tolerate many fleas, while the
youngest one would perform anti-parasitic grooming frequently (Wilsonet al , 2002; Hawlena et al ., 2008).