A seasonal chigger-borne disease surveillance program was established at Geoje from March to November of 2018 in Gyeongnam Province, Republic of Korea. Two species of 84 wild rodents were collected by using Sherman traps for Geoje in 2018. Chigger mites were collected from the live-captured rodents to figure out seasonal prevalence of mite species and to identify chigger-borne pathogens. A total of 4,611 chiggers were collected from two species of the rodents in 2018. The chigger mites were collected mainly from A. agrarius (Chigger Index; CI 68.3). A vector of scrub typhus, Leptotrombidium orientale was predominant species (CI 14.9, Species Ratio; SR 27.2%) followed by L. pallidium (CI 14.2, SR 25.9%) and L. scutellare (CI 13.2, SR 24.2%) in 2018. In the results of the isolation of Orientia tsutsugamushi from the chigger mites, no pathogens detected from the DNA of the 171 pools of the mites in 2018, using a Polymerase Chain Reaction method.

• Hyo-Bin Jeong(Department of Health & Environment, Kosin University)
• Gi-Seok Kang(Department of Health & Environment, Kosin University)
• Sun Ho Jung(Department of Health & Environment, Kosin University)
• Won Il Park(Division of Medical Entomology, Korea National Institute of Health)
• Shin-Hyeong Cho(Division of Medical Entomology, Korea National Institute of Health)
• Dong-Kyu Lee(Department of Health & Environment, Kosin University)