McGowan M J, Camin J H, McNew R W
J Parasitol. 1979 Oct;65(5):692-9.
The resistance of cottontail rabbits to tick feeding appears correlated with the rabbits' development of skin-sensitizing antibodies. Resistance appeared to be greatest in adult rabbits which had been repeatedly infested with ticks. Rabbits with little exposure to ticks, usually the young cottontails, showed little or no skin-sensitizing antibody present in their blood and usually had relatively high tick loads when compared with adult rabbits. Models used to interpret the data show promise as tools for predicting tick population fluctuations and, perhaps, incidence of vector borne disease outbreaks. The existence of resistance to tick attachment has important implications for the host-parasite relationship. The research lends support to the hypothesis that the resistance may function as a homeostatic regulatory mechanism capable of maintaining the size of the tick population in equilibrium with the size of the rabbit population. In this way, host resistance may be advantageous to the parasite as well as to the host.
棉尾兔对蜱虫叮咬的抵抗力似乎与兔子皮肤致敏抗体的产生有关。抵抗力在反复受到蜱虫侵扰的成年兔子中似乎最强。很少接触蜱虫的兔子，通常是幼棉尾兔，血液中几乎没有或没有皮肤致敏抗体，与成年兔子相比，其蜱虫负荷通常相对较高。用于解释数据的模型有望成为预测蜱虫种群波动以及可能的病媒传播疾病暴发发生率的工具。对蜱虫附着的抵抗力的存在对宿主 - 寄生虫关系具有重要意义。该研究支持了这样一种假设，即这种抵抗力可能作为一种稳态调节机制，能够使蜱虫种群数量与兔子种群数量保持平衡。通过这种方式，宿主抵抗力可能对寄生虫和宿主都有利。
