Fig 1.
Statistical analysis of parameters affecting the probability to detect DNA from Coccidia.
(A) Odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals are shown for variables determining the risk for detection of Frenkelia glareoli in Myodes glareolus and Apodemus agrarius compared to Apodemus flavicollis. A model considering only the rodent species as explanatory variables is presented. Odds ratios for Apodemus sylvaticus, Microtus agrestis and Microtus arvalis were 9.3×10−8 and were omitted from the figure due to the fact that the parasite was not found in any of these animals and the resulting very wide confidence intervals. (B) Distribution of dry eye lens weights, as an indirect indicator for age, in M. glareolus with and without F. glareoli infection. Only animals trapped in 2011 were considered since eye lens weights were not determined in 2010. Individual points representing means of two eye lenses are shown together with means ± SD for all animals in the group. *, p < 0.05 in a Mann-Whitney U test. (C, D). Odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals for the probability to detect Toxoplasma gondii DNA in the brain by PCR are illustrated. The model in (C) considered only the rodent genus, the model in (D) genus and study location. Myodes is not shown since T. gondii was not found in these rodents. The odds ratios for Myodes spp. was 7.0×10−8 and the 95% confidence interval was very wide. Reference categories were Apodemus for genus and Gatow for study location. All odds ratios and significance levels were calculated by logistic regression followed by t test to determine the significance of the effects. ***, p < 0.001.
Table 1.
Rodent species trapped at the different study sites and included in the study.
Table 2.
Prevalence rates of Coccidia in small rodents.
Table 3.
Prevalence rates of antibodies against Toxocara canis excretory-secretory antigen.
Fig 2.
Odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals for variables determining the risk for detection of antibodies against Toxocara canis.
Logistic regression was conducted using the variables study location (A), rodent genus (B) and a combination of both (C). Reference categories were Apodemus for genus and Gatow for study location. The odds ratios for the genus Microtus were 1.1×10−7 in both models in (B) and (C) but are not presented since antibodies against T. canis were not found in any sample from this genus and the very wide 95% confidence intervals. *, p < 0.05; **, p < 0.01.
Table 4.
Parasite co-infections found in examined mice (n = 257).
Fig 3.
Identification of patterns using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and k-means cluster analysis.
NMDS plots show similarity for trapped rodent species (A) or parasite-positive rodents (C) for the different trapping sites (G, Gatow, M, Moabit, S, Steglitz, T, Tegel) and trapping blocks (1–8). Rodents were considered to be positive for ascarids if the T. canis ELISA was positive or any ascarid species was detected by PCR. For every trapping week, the number of rodents of a particular species or the number positive for a particular parasite was used to calculate a Bray-Curtis dissimilarity matrix followed by NMDS. The matrix was used to identify the minimum number of k-means clusters which were indicated on the NMDS plots using ellipses of different colors. (B) Clusters were analyzed for differences in the proportions of particular rodent or parasite species (species relative to total number in that cluster) using mid-P exact tests. Numbers with different indices in the same column indicate significant differences (p<0.01) while identical indices indicate non-significant differences (p>0.05).