Dean Biggins, PhD (Former Employee)

Sylvatic plague poses a substantial risk to black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus) and their obligate predator, the black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes). The effects of plague on prairie dogs and ferrets are mitigated using a deltamethrin pulicide dust that reduces the spread of plague by killing fleas, the vector for the plague bacterium. In portions of Conata Basin, Buffalo...

At Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico, US, infusing Gunnison's prairie dog (Cynomys gunnisoni) burrows with an insecticide dust containing 0.05% deltamethrin killed fleas which transmit bubonic plague. The reduction in the number of fleas per prairie dog was significant and dramatic immediately after infusions, with a suggestion that the reduction persisted for as long as 12...

No abstract available.

Sylvatic plague vaccine (SPV) is a virally vectored bait-delivered vaccine expressing Yersinia pestis antigens that can protect prairie dogs (Cynomys spp.) from plague and has potential utility as a management tool. In a large-scale 3-year field trial, SPV-laden baits containing the biomarker rhodamine B (used to determine bait consumption) were distributed annually at a rate of...

Grooming is a common animal behavior that aids in ectoparasite defense. Ectoparasites can stimulate grooming, and natural selection can also favor endogenous mechanisms that evoke periodic bouts of “programmed” grooming to dislodge or kill ectoparasites before they bite or feed. Moreover, grooming can function as a displacement or communication behavior. We compared the grooming...

The plague bacterium Yersinia pestis was introduced to California in 1900 and spread rapidly as a sylvatic disease of mammalian hosts and flea vectors, invading the Great Plains in the United States by the 1930s to 1940s. In grassland ecosystems, plague causes periodic, devastating epizootics in colonies of black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus), sciurid rodents that create and...