Meeting Abstract
47.1 Tuesday, Jan. 5 Behavioral analysis of deer mice with respect to hantavirus transmission DIZNEY, L.*; VARNER, J.; DEARING, M.D.; University of Utah; University of Utah; University of Utah l.dizney@utah.edu
Sin Nombre virus (SNV) is an emerging zoonosis of concern. SNV is hosted by the deer mouse. Transmission between mice is hypothesized to be through exchange of body fluids during aggressive encounters, though this aspect of hantavirus ecology has been difficult to study. Additionally, species diversity appears to decrease SNV prevalence, but the mechanism underlying this reduction is unknown. The goals of our research were to determine how frequently deer mice engage in aggressive behaviors that could lead to transmission, whether certain demographic groups were more likely to engage in these behaviors and to examine the impact of other species on behavior. To address these issues, we used a novel surveillance system. On a 3.1 ha site in central Utah, we live-trapped all nocturnal rodents for 3 nights every 6 weeks from May through September 2009 (4 sampling periods). We marked all animals with passive integrative transponder (PIT) tags, recorded life history data and collected blood samples from deer mice for SNV analysis. We then observed behavior for 6 nights at 9 surveillance stations consisting of foraging arenas (3 g millet in 1 l of sand), infrared cameras and PIT tag readers. Initial results from the first two sampling periods yielded 1080 hrs of video recording. We observed a total of 807 visits to the stations by 4 species of rodents. In only 3 % of these visits was more than one animal present at a time. Five different behaviors were observed during multi-animal visits: fighting (11%), chasing (31%), avoiding (42%), sharing (8%) and allogrooming (8%). Pocket mice competitively excluded deer mice, and deer mice were never observed to engage in aggressive behaviors with conspecifics. These preliminary results suggest that interspecific competition may alter deer mice behavior thereby lowering SNV transmission rates.
