Honors College Thesis
 

Relationship between parasite load and diet quality in two desert bighorn sheep metapopulations in southern California

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/honors_college_theses/dr26z5790

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  • The increased severity of unseasonal drought conditions in the American Southwest have resulted in herbivorous species, like the desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni), receiving lower quality forage in their diet at less reliable frequency. The Mojave Desert and the Peninsular Mountain ranges also contain large variations in elevation, which have been correlated with precipitation and temperature that may further affect the plant quality in these regions. Lower quality forage could mean that they are less equipped to handle the stresses from external factors such as parasite load, which may reduce their survival rates. Given the effects of global climate change on the Southwest United States, determining the relationship between healthiness in native animals and the quality of forage they receive is of pressing concern in predicting long-term survivability. High quality forage usually is a result of higher water content in the plants, which means that the quality of forage determined from fecal chlorophyll can be expected to be correlated with the amount of water received through diet by the sheep. The objective of this study was to determine if there is a meaningful relationship between diet quality in an individual and its parasite load. I considered the relationship between these two factors by comparing the optical density of extracted chlorophyll pigments from fecal samples to gastrointestinal parasite eggs recovered from samples. Parasites were unexpectedly rare in the feces of tested animals, which limited my ability to record this relationship in any meaningful way. There weren’t any strong associations between parasite load and diet quality, but there was a strong relationship between diet quality and mountain range within and between the two regions.
  • Keywords: Desert bighorn sheep, Mojave Desert, Diet Quality, Parasite
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