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Myxomatosis: changes in the epidemiology of myxomatosis coincident with the establishment of the European rabbit flea Spilopsyllus cuniculi (Dale) in the Mallee Region of Victoria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2009

Rosamond C. H. Shepherd  and
J. W. Edmonds
Rosamond C. H. Shepherd
Affiliation:
Keith Turnbull Research Institute, Vermin and Noxious Weeds Destruction Board, Department of Crown Lands and Survey, Frankston 3199, Victoria, Australia
J. W. Edmonds
Affiliation:
Keith Turnbull Research Institute, Vermin and Noxious Weeds Destruction Board, Department of Crown Lands and Survey, Frankston 3199, Victoria, Australia
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Outbreaks of myxomatosis during the winter or spring have coincided with the establishment of the European rabbit flea in the Mallee region. The severity of these outbreaks has varied from causing complete suppression of the normal spring increase in rabbit numbers to being completely ineffective in a year in which late spring rains allowed rabbit breeding to extend into the early summer.

In 1973 and 1974 effective spring myxomatosis caused heavy mortality in kittens before they emerged from the warrens. The age of the population increased as the result of few young rabbits coming into the population and of the lessened stress on old rabbits in a low summer-autumn population. This effect was reversed in the late-breeding year, 1976, when flea numbers were apparently too low to maintain a spring outbreak and rabbit numbers increased rapidly.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Hygiene , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , December 1978 , pp. 399 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

References

REFERENCES

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