Researcher ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4294-5456
Graduation Year
2025
Document Type
Campus Only Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Biology
Reader 1
Sarah Budischak
Reader 2
Elise Ferree
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
2024 Mary M McFetridge
Abstract
Emerging infectious diseases represent one of the biggest threats to human and wildlife health, driven by complicated and poorly understood interactions between parasites and their hosts. Almost half of all animal species are parasitic, highlighting the essential role parasites play in a community’s ecology and the importance of observing how disease prevalence changes in response to differences in hosts and the environment. In this paper, we discuss a longitudinal experiment studying cowpox virus in bank voles (Clethrionomys glareolus), living in Southern Finland. Over three years, voles were randomly subjected to one of four different treatment combinations of fed (food supplementation), unfed (no additional food), deworm (deworming treatment), and control (no deworming treatment). We investigated the effects of nutrition and coinfection on the prevalence of pox in the population. Contrary to our hypothesis that food supplementation and deworming increases the immune system’s response to pox, resulting in reduced population pox prevalence, we found no significant difference between sites. We also tested potential differences in pox infection status based on sex, age and reproductive status. There was a significant effect of age, with older individuals experiencing a higher likelihood of pox infection. Additionally, reproductively active voles were more likely to have been infected with pox. Studying these factors in natural populations allows us to gain a clearer picture of how heterogeneous host characteristics influence disease prevalence. Through this study, we underscore the importance of susceptibility and exposure in parasite-host dynamics to provide insights for infectious disease prevention in wildlife and humans.
Recommended Citation
McFetridge, Mary, "Individual and Population-scale Drivers of Cowpox in Bank Voles (Clethrionomys glareolus)" (2025). Scripps Senior Theses. 2516.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/2516
This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.
