Natural history of tick-borne spotted fever in the USA. Susceptibility of small mammals to virulent Rickettsia rickettsii

Abstract

In the ecology of spotted fever rickettsiae, one of the as yet unsolved problems concerns the significance of small animals in the distribution of Rickettsia rickettsii in nature. In the Bitter Root Valley of western Montana, a great variety of rodents, rabbits and hares are known to serve as the preferred hosts for the immature stages of the vector tick, Dermacentor andersoni.The authors analyse the susceptibility of various species of small mammals to virulent R. rickettsii and evaluate their efficiency as sources of infection for larval ticks. The results demonstrate that meadow-mice, Columbian ground-squirrels, golden-mantled ground-squirrels, chipmunks and snowshoe hares (the latter to a lesser extent), when bitten by infected ticks, respond with rickettsiaemias of sufficient length and degree to infect normal larval D. andersoni. High infection rates were obtained in ticks that fed during periods of high rickettsial concentrations in the blood.