Social networks and parasite transmission in wild guinea pigs (Cavia aperea) in outdoor enclosures

SOBRERO, R.; GOGGI, J.; EBERHARDT, A. T.; BELDOMENICO, P.M.

Potsdam

Congreso; 6th International Conference of Rodent Biology and Management and 16th Rodens et Spatium; 2018

Julius Kühn-Institut

Social network analysis (SNA) provides a description of social structure. Studies of the causes and consequences of individual variation in network position that arise as a consequence of an individual?s phenotype or patterns of group-living. SNA provide a framework for representing the implications of networks for dynamics of parasites; the contact between hosts that may allow the transmission of parasites. Contacts were assumed that individuals are scaled according to their parasite load. Alternatively, parasites were distributed randomly among node social networks. We used SNA to shed light on the importance of different aspects of sociality on parasitism in a caviomorph rodent, wild guinea pig (Cavia aperea). This study implied different stage of intensive research: animals caught from the wild, cavies remained free of infection, enclosures acclimatization, capture-recapture, direct behavioural observations, and compare networks over time. Social interaction was recorded on at least two days each week for 5 months. Sampling for social network formation matched the chronic nature of parasites in Cavia aperea. We used daily subgroup composition records to construct space-sharing weighted networks with centrality measures. Preliminary results indicate relative consistency and stability of social networks over different months. Networks with a clear partition of nodes into groups according nest distribution and animal density. Additionally, asymmetry networks show minimized edge crossing and uniform edge length. High clustering indicates that, on average, focal individuals became more likely to interact locally with a subset of others rather trying to maintain group-wide interactions. Physical contact patterns were heterogeneous. The parasite load of highly connected individuals was note necessarily greater than that of less connected individuals in the networks. We suggest that the wild guinea pig may be an important model species for better understanding the transmission of infectious disease in an ecologically valid contex