Linking Behavior, Co-infection Patterns, and Viral Infection Risk With the Whole Gastrointestinal Helminth Community Structure in Mastomys natalensis

Abstract

Infection probability, load, and community structure of helminths varies strongly between and within animal populations. This can be ascribed to environmental stochasticity or due to individual characteristics of the host such as their age or sex. Other, but understudied, factors are the hosts' behavior and co-infection patterns. In this study, we used the multimammate mouse (Mastomys natalensis) as a model system to investigate how the hosts' sex, age, exploration behavior, and viral infection history affects their infection risk, parasitic load, and community structure of gastrointestinal helminths. We hypothesized that the hosts' exploration behavior would play a key role in the risk for infection by different gastrointestinal helminths, whereby highly explorative individuals would have a higher infection risk leading to a wider diversity of helminths and a larger load compared to less explorative individuals. Fieldwork was performed in Morogoro, Tanzania, where we trapped a total of 214 individual mice. Their exploratory behavior was characterized using a hole-board test after which we collected the helminths inside their gastrointestinal tract. During our study, we found helminths belonging to eight different genera: Hymenolepis sp., Protospirura muricola, Syphacia sp., Trichuris mastomysi, Gongylonema sp., Pterygodermatites sp., Raillietina sp., and Inermicapsifer sp. and one family: Trichostrongylidae. Hierarchical modeling of species communities (HMSC) was used to investigate the effect of the different host-related factors on the infection probability, parasite load, and community structure of these helminths. Our results show that species richness was higher in adults and in females compared to juveniles and males, respectively. Contrary to our expectations, we found that less explorative individuals had higher infection probability with different helminths resulting in a higher diversity, which could be due to a higher exposure rate to these helminths and/or behavioral modification due to the infection.

Respiratory Disease Risk of Zoo-Housed Bonobos Is Associated with Sex and Betweenness Centrality in the Proximity Network

“…Finally, we only focused on social-network position, sex, and age as potential explanatory factors for the occurrence of respiratory disease symptoms, while other behavioral aspects could also influence infection risk, such as individual differences in personality [ 104 ]. Indeed, personality has been found to influence infection risk in different animal species (e.g., [ 105 , 106 , 107 ]), but studies investigating respiratory disease risk remain rare. Therefore, future studies that include larger sample sizes could further explore the association between respiratory disease risk and other behavioral variables, besides social-network position, such as personality, to get a more comprehensive view of factors determining respiratory disease risk in primates.…”

Host related factors determine co-occurrence patterns between pathogenic bacteria, protozoa, and helminths in populations of the multimammate mouse, Mastomys natalensis

“…The field setup, rodent collections, behavioral measurements, and helminth screening are described in detail in Vanden Broecke et al (2021a). In brief: rodents were trapped on eleven different sites in both maize fields and in fallow lands on the Sokoine University of Agriculture farm (SUA) in Morogoro, Tanzania, from July until September 2019.…”

“…The behaviour of the rodents was measured immediately after they arrived at the IPM using a hole-board test, which is commonly used to study behaviour in M. natalensis (Vanden Broecke et al, 2021b, 2021c, 2021a. Behavioral recordings started when the individual was inside the box and lasted for 10 minutes.…”

“…Afterward, we removed the whole gastrointestinal tract and kept it in a 50 ml tube with 100% ethanol for further analysis at the parasitology lab at the University of Barcelona (Ribas et al, 2011). The helminths were identified to genus or species level using morphological characteristics described in (Ribas et al, 2017(Ribas et al, , 2013Vanden Broecke et al, 2021a).…”

“…The rodent also hosts several zoonotic diseases, including Yersinia pestis (bubonic plague), Leptospira interrogans (leptospirosis), Leishmania donovani (cutaneous leishmaniasis) and Lassa virus (Lassa fever) (Holt et al, 2006;Mariën et al, 2019a;Meerburg et al, 2009;Monath, 1987;Neerinckx et al, 2008;Sadlova et al, 2019) as well as several ecto-and endoparasites Diagne et al, 2016;Diouf et al, 2013;Oguge et al, 1997;Ribas et al, 2017Ribas et al, , 2013Ribas et al, , 2012. We recently used M. natalensis as a model system to investigate how host characteristics and behaviour affect the community structure of gastrointestinal helminths (Vanden Broecke et al, 2021a). We observed that helminth richness was higher in adults and females than juveniles and males.…”