Parasites Of The Marsh Rice Rat

A variety of parasites have been recorded from the marsh rice rat (''Oryzomys palustris''), a semiaquatic rodent found in the eastern and southern United States, north to New Jersey and Kansas and south to Florida and Texas, and in Tamaulipas, far northeastern Mexico. Some of these parasites are endoparasites, internal parasites, while others are ectoparasites, external parasites.

Parasitologist John Kinsella compared the endoparasites of marsh rice rats in a saltwater marsh at Cedar Key and a freshwater marsh at Paynes Prairie, both in Florida, in a 1988 study. He found a total of 45 species, a number unequaled in rodents. This may be related to the diverse habitats the rice rat uses and to its omnivorous diet; it eats a variety of animals which may serve as intermediate hosts of various parasites. The endoparasites in the saltwater marsh were dominated by trematodes (flukes), and those of the freshwater marsh by nematodes (roundworms). Endoparasites were found in the gastric mucosa (which lines the stomach), the cavity of the stomach, the small intestine, the cecum, the large intestine, the pancreatic duct, the bile ducts, the mucus of the liver, the pulmonary arteries, the abdominal cavity, and the pleural cavity.Kinsella, 1988, table 1 While the marsh rice rat harbors a number of host-specific species,Kinsella, 1988, p. 275 such as the nematode '' Aonchotheca forresteri'', other parasite species, such as the lone star tick ''(pictured)'', are shared with other mammals.Kinsella, 1988, p. 279 Compared to the hispid cotton rat (''Sigmodon hispidus''), Florida marsh rice rats usually harbor fewer individual ectoparasites of each species. ''Borrelia'', the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, has been identified in some ticks that infect the marsh rice rat and it has been identified as a possible natural reservoir for ''Borrelia''.

Key

Ectoparasites

Acari

The Acari include the mites and ticks. Many are parasites of other animals. One study in South Carolina failed to find ticks on marsh rice rats living in marshes, which are an unsuitable habitat for the parasites.Clark et al., 2001, p. 1382

Anoplura

Sucking lice (Anoplura) are a diverse group infecting placental mammals.Durden and Musser, 1994, p. 1 Species found on marsh rice rats include three of the common genus '' Hoplopleura'' and '' Polyplax spinulosa'', which more usually infects black and brown rats.

Siphonaptera

Fleas (Siphonaptera) are common parasites of vertebrates, mainly mammals.Medvedev and Krasnov, 2006, p. 163 Several species of fleas have been found on the marsh rice rat.

Endoparasites

Unless otherwise specified, all information in this section is from Kinsella (1988, table 1).

Nematoda

Nematodes are among the largest animal phyla and include at least 12,000 known species that are parasites of vertebrates.Morand et al., 2006, p. 67 In Kinsella's 1988 study in Florida, species diversity was higher in the saltwater marsh (Cedar Key) than the freshwater marsh (Paynes Prairie), but nematodes at Paynes Prairie occurred more commonly and made up the bulk of the parasites found in rice rats there.

Cestoda

Four tapeworms are known from the marsh rice rat, all in Florida, but three of those are usually found in other species and only rarely in the rice rat.Kinsella, 1988, p. 277

Digenea

Flukes (Trematoda) from the subclass Digenea are common parasites of small mammals with complex life cycles.Feliu et al., 2006, p. 13 In his 1988 study, Kinsella found an unprecedented 21 species of trematodes in Florida marsh rice rats. The intermediate hosts of these trematodes include a variety of invertebrates, fish, and amphibians, which are eaten by the marsh rice rat.Kinsella, 1988, p. 278 Trematodes were generally more common at the Cedar Key saltwater marsh than at the freshwater marsh in Paynes Prairie.

Pentastomida

Pentastomida is an enigmatic group of parasites that may be related to maxillopod crustaceans.Martin and Davis, 2001, p. 24 One species, '' Porocephalus crotali'', is known from the marsh rice rat.Wolfe, 1982, p. 3 It infects various mammals in the southeastern United States, which serve as intermediate hosts; snakes which eat those mammals are the definitive hosts.Brookins et al., 2009, p. 460

Apicomplexa

Apicomplexa is a major group of unicellular eukaryotes that encompasses several important parasites, including the malaria parasite ''Plasmodium''.Beck et al., 2009, p. 175 Three species are known from the marsh rice rat, all of which belong to the Eimerina clade.Beck et al., 2009, fig. 1 Two are in the genus ''Eimeria'', members of which cause the economically significant disease coccidiosis in poultry.Beck et al., 2009, p. 177 The third is a member of ''Isospora'', which includes species that are pathogenic in humans and pigs.Lindsay et al., 1997, p. 20

Footnotes

References

Literature cited

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* Diaw, O.T. 1976. Contribution a l'etude de nematodes Trichostrongyloidea parasites de xenarthre, marsupiaux et rongeurs neotropicaux. Bulletin de la Muséum National de la Histoire Naturel de Paris (Zoologie) 282:1065-1089.
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* Durden, L.A. and Kollars, T.M., Jr. 1997. The fleas (Siphonaptera) of Tennessee. ''Journal of Vector Ecology'' 22(1):13-22.
* Durden, L.A. and Musser, G.G. 1994. The sucking lice (Insecta, Anoplura) of the world: a taxonomic checklist with records of mammalian hosts and geographical distributions. ''Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History'' 218:1-90.
* Durden, L.A., Kollars, T.M., Jr., Patton, S. and Gerhardt, R.R. 1997. Sucking lice (Anoplura) of mammals of Tennessee. ''Journal of Vector Ecology'' 22(1):71-76.
* Durden, L.A., Wills, W. and Clark, K.L. 1999. The fleas (Siphonaptera) of South Carolina with an assessment of their vectorial importance. ''Journal of Vector Ecology'' 24(2):171-181.
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* Forrester, D.J. 1992. ''Parasites and diseases of wild mammals in Florida''. University of Press of Florida, 459 pp.
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* Kinsella, J.M. 1974. Comparison of helminth parasites of the cotton rat, Sigmodon hispidus, from several habitats in Florida. ''American Museum Novitates'' 2540:1-12.
* Kinsella, J.M. 1988. Comparison of helminths of rice rats, Oryzomys palustris, from freshwater and saltwater marshes in Florida. ''Proceedings of the Helminthological Society of Washington'' 55(2):275-280.
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* Kinsella, J.M. and Tkach, V.V. 2005. Notocotylus fosteri sp. nov. (Trematoda, Notocotylidae) from the rice rat, Oryzomys palustris in Florida. ''Acta Parasitologica'' 50(3):194-198.
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* Kollars, T.M., Jr., Durden, L.A. and Oliver, J.H., Jr. 1997. Fleas and lice parasitizing mammals in Missouri. ''Journal of Vector Ecology'' 22(2):125-132.
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* Kontrimavichus, V.L. 1985. Helminths of mustelids and trends in their evolution. Amerind Publishing Company, 607 pp.
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* Levin, M., Levine, J.F., Norris, D.E., Howard, P., Yang, S. and Apperson, C.S. 1993. Reservoir competence of rice rat and lizards for the Lyme disease spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi. Pp. 11-13 in Apperson, C.S., Levine, J.F. and Snoddy, E.L. (eds.). Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Lyme Disease in the Southeast. Raleigh: North Carolina State University.
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* Levine, J.F., Apperson, C.S., Strider, J.B., Jr., Levin, M., Ryan, J.R., Howard, P., Coughlin, W., Knight, M. and Yang, S. 1993. Ticks, their hosts, and Borrelia burgdorferi on the outer banks of North Carolina. Pp. 7-8 in Apperson, C.S., Levine, J.F. and Snoddy, E.L. (eds.). Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Lyme Disease in the Southeast. Raleigh: North Carolina State University.
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* Martin, J.W. and Davis, G.E. 2001. An updated classification of the Recent Crustacea. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Science Series 39:1-124.
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* Musser, G.G. and Carleton, M.D. 2005. Superfamily Muroidea. Pp. 894-1531 in Wilson, D.E. and Reeder, D.M. (eds.). ''Mammal Species of the World: a taxonomic and geographic reference. 3rd ed.'' Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2 vols., 2142 pp.
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* Sonenshine, D.E., Ratzlaff, R., Troyer, J.M., Demmerle, S.M., Demmerle, E., Jenkins, S. and Annis, B. 1993. Tick-host associations and maintenance of Borrelia burgdorferi in Virginia. Pp. 8-9 in Apperson, C.S., Levine, J.F. and Snoddy, E.L. (eds.). Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Lyme Disease in the Southeast. Raleigh: North Carolina State University.
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* Whitaker, J.O. and Hamilton, W.J. 1998. Mammals of the Eastern United States. Cornell University Press, 583 pp.
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* Williams, D.C., Wills, W., Durden, L.A. and Gray, E.W. 1999. Ticks of South Carolina (Acari: Ixodoidea). ''Journal of Vector Ecology'' 24(2):224-232.
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* Wolfe, J.L. 1982. Oryzomys palustris. ''Mammalian Species'' 176:1-5.
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Oryzomys palustris, parasites of
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