Drivers of flea abundance in wild rodents across local and regional scales in the Chihuahuan Desert, northwestern Mexico

The broad distribution of macroparasites and their thriving populations are matters health economic concern. Macroparasites cause damage both directly through feeding habits, which impact host fitness, indirectly the transmission various infectious diseases relevance to human domestic animal wildlife conservation. Because impacts on risk disease related abundance, understanding drivers macroparasite burden is relevance. Various traits environmental factors have been associated with differences in abundance. In addition these variables, spatial scale increasingly incorporated understand how vary across space. However, variation relative importance as predictors abundance at different scales not well understood. To further clarify relationship between we investigated effects flea rodents Chihuahuan Desert northwestern Mexico three levels: within a single site, sampling sites vegetation types, region. This partitioning allowed us compare local regional scales. Fleas provide natural model assess interplay variables because life cycles alternate on-host off-host environments hosts varying ranges distribution. We sampled 1311 fleas from 674 rodent individuals 14 species 40 plots 2012 2013. Using generalized linear mixed models, found that was combinations such size sex. specific combination predictive differed species, while showed context dependency, although this could only be tested full level analysis most abundant Dipodomys merriami. Sampling season variable consistently significant scales, reflecting far-reaching large-scale, interannual fluctuations. These results emphasize integrating can strengthen study design for monitoring burden.