| natural history of tick-borne spotted fever in the usa. susceptibility of small mammals to virulent rickettsia rickettsii. | in the ecology of spotted fever rickettsiae, one of the as yet unsolved problems concerns the significance of small animals in the distribution of rickettsia rickettsii in nature. in the bitter root valley of western montana, a great variety of rodents, rabbits and hares are known to serve as the preferred hosts for the immature stages of the vector tick, dermacentor andersoni.the authors analyse the susceptibility of various species of small mammals to virulent r. rickettsii and evaluate their ... | 1966 | 5296999 |