Prediction of prevalence from mean abundance via a simple epidemiological model in mesostigmate mites from two geographical regions

Abstract

We analysed data on the abundance and distribution of 26 species of mesostigmate mites with different feeding habits collected from bodies of small mammalian hosts in 2 geographical regions (West Siberia and Argentina). We tested whether prevalence of a mite can be reliably predicted from a simple epidemiological model that takes into account mean abundance and its variance. We theorized that the difference between prevalence predicted from the model and observed prevalence would be smallest in obligatory haematophagous mites, intermediate in facultatively haematophagous mites and greatest in non-haematophagous mites. We also theorized that prevalence of mites from the region with sharp seasonality (Siberia) would be predicted accurately only if host number would be taken into account. We found that the success of a simple epidemiological model to predict prevalence in mites was similar to that reported earlier for other ectoparasitic arthropods. Surprisingly, the model predicted prevalence of obligatory exclusively haematophagous mites less successfully than that of mites with other feeding habits. No difference in the model performance between mites occurring in the 2 geographical regions were found independent of whether the model took the number of hosts into account.