The aim of the current study was to survey the species diversity and Leishmania infection of rodents in the Gonbad -e- Kavoos City and County, northeastern Iran, during 2018–2019. Totally, 20 rural and four urban areas endemic for leishmaniasis were se-lected and visited monthly. Rodent species diversity indices were calculated in different spatial and temporal scales. Species rich-ness was also calculated using rarefaction curves to estimate the number of species in unequal sample sizes. A total of 167 rodents belonging to 7 species, 6 genera, and 2 families were collected. Rattus rattus (34.7%) and Rattus norvegicus (18.6%) were identi-fied as dominant species. The largest Margalef and Menhinick spe-cies richness (DMg = 1.55; DMn = 1.01) and the highest value of the Shannon index (H ́ = 1.71) were observed in rural areas. Seasonal abundance of the rodents varied among species and showed that the highest richness (DMg = 1.27; DMn = 0.65) occurred in spring and the highest value of Shannon index (H ́ = 1.72) was noted in summer. Rarefaction curves confirmed that the highest species richness occurred in summer and spring in the rural area. Sea-sonal fluctuations of R. rattus and R. norvegicus have a significant impact on the changes in rodent species diversity. Investigations of Leishmania infection showed that amastigote forms of Leish-mania were observed in 15.4% of smears taken from Rhombomys opimus and Meriones libycus and examined under the light mi-croscope. The highest rate of Leishmania infection was observed during the summer.

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