If you happened to be in Utah a few years back and noticed odd-looking deer mice scurrying across the desert, your eyes were not deceiving you. The rodents were dusted in Day-Glo talcum powder in the name of science.
Christine A. Clay and M. Denise Dearing of the University of Utah and colleagues released five wild mice each night, each of a different color, and then captured other deer mice across a six-acre study site the next day. Powdered mice that fought or mated left some of their powder on other mice, so by shining a black light on the captured mice, the researchers could tell whether powdered mice had been in contact with them.
Deer mice carry a virus called Sin Nombre that causes hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a potentially lethal lung infection, in humans. People get the virus from being near mice, but the animals spread it among themselves through direct contact.
A rule of thumb among those who study pathogen transmission is that a minority of a population, usually around 20 percent, is responsible for most of the transmission, perhaps 80 percent. In this case, the researchers found that this rule applied fairly well. The findings were reported in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
The researchers also found that the mice most frequently in contact with other mice tended to be larger and older. But the rodents? sex was not a factor, they noted, which runs counter to earlier studies that suggested that males were more likely to transmit the virus because they tend to fight more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/science/13obmice.html?_r=1&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065
Christine A. Clay and M. Denise Dearing of the University of Utah and colleagues released five wild mice each night, each of a different color, and then captured other deer mice across a six-acre study site the next day. Powdered mice that fought or mated left some of their powder on other mice, so by shining a black light on the captured mice, the researchers could tell whether powdered mice had been in contact with them.
Deer mice carry a virus called Sin Nombre that causes hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a potentially lethal lung infection, in humans. People get the virus from being near mice, but the animals spread it among themselves through direct contact.
A rule of thumb among those who study pathogen transmission is that a minority of a population, usually around 20 percent, is responsible for most of the transmission, perhaps 80 percent. In this case, the researchers found that this rule applied fairly well. The findings were reported in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
The researchers also found that the mice most frequently in contact with other mice tended to be larger and older. But the rodents? sex was not a factor, they noted, which runs counter to earlier studies that suggested that males were more likely to transmit the virus because they tend to fight more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/science/13obmice.html?_r=1&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065