Rodents and The Associated Parasites from Different Habitat Types in Sarawak

Raja Nur Atiqah, Raja Azizi (2024) Rodents and The Associated Parasites from Different Habitat Types in Sarawak. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

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Abstract

Rodents are the most successful mammalian order and are well distributed globally, including Sarawak. However, habitat destruction and alteration may influence the rodents’ population structures and distributions. Rodents can serve as hosts for medically concerning parasites that might act as vectors for zoonotic diseases. This has highlighted the importance of understanding the distribution and diversity of rodents in different habitat types and the parasites they carry. This study is intended to: 1) study the distribution and diversity of rodents in different habitat types in Sarawak; 2) determine the parasite prevalence and habitat preference of rodents in different habitat types in Sarawak; and 3) discover the host-parasite relationship between rodents and their parasites in Sarawak. Samplings were conducted between November 2018 and December 2019, which resulted in 241 individuals of rodents captured, comprising eight species. Of this, 78 individuals were captured from urban areas, followed by oil palm plantations (72 individuals), rural areas (65 individuals), and forest areas (26 individuals). Statistical analysis showed that the forest areas have the most diverse rodent’ species among all habitats (H’= 1.91, p<0.05), followed by oil palm plantations (H’=0.93), urban (H’=0.66) and rural areas (H’=0.40). A total of 236 rodents were then examined for parasites, and 218 of them were found to be infected with at least one parasite. A total of 41 species of parasites were recovered in this study, and the rodent community was mainly dominated by ectoparasites (77.12%), followed by endoparasites (61.44%), and hemoparasites (30.51%). From the habitat viewpoint, overall parasite prevalence was highest in forest areas (100%). A significant difference between habitat types was detected in the prevalence of hemoparasites and endoparasites (both p<0.001) believed to be influenced by humidity and temperature as well as other factors. This study also discovered 129 host-parasite interactions between 41 parasite species and eight murid rodents. Goodness-of-fit iv indicates (m2XY=183.3784, p= 0.035, nperm=1000) resulted significant congruence between the host and parasite distance matrices. Meanwhile, bipartite analysis indicates a low level of specialization for all parasites, or, in other words, parasites in this study are not host-specific based on bipartite analysis. These results provide information on the structure of rodents as well as the population of their parasites in Sarawak. This study also depicts Borneo's present parasite infection status and rodent-parasite relationship, which may help in deeper research on parasite and host relationships as well as be part of the effort in forecasting human health risk in this region. Keywords: Habitat gradient, host-parasites interaction, parasite, rodents, zoonoses.

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