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Fleas Of The American Pika: Diversity And Biogeography In North America’S Intermountain West, Niyomi Wijewardena
Fleas Of The American Pika: Diversity And Biogeography In North America’S Intermountain West, Niyomi Wijewardena
All NMU Master's Theses
American pikas (Ochotona princeps) are small mammals that are widely distributed across North America’s Intermountain West. Previous investigations revealed five geographically distinct mitochondrial lineages within O. princeps associated with different mountain systems of the Intermountain West. In contrast, diversity of endoparasitic helminths of pikas is not structured geographically in the same way. Instead, there are two primary parasite assemblages, one distributed across southwestern pika populations and one found across the northeastern part of the host range. These contrasting patterns suggest that the shared history of pikas and their parasites had different consequences for the evolutionary trajectories of these …