Chelsea L. Wood

Parasites alter community structure

Parasites often play an important role in modifying the physiology and behavior of their hosts and may, consequently, mediate the influence hosts have on other components of an ecological community. Along the northern Atlantic coast of North America, the dominant herbivorous snail Littorina littorea structures rocky intertidal communities through strong grazing pressure and is frequently parasitized by the digenean trematode Cryptocotyle lingua. We hypothesized that the effects of parasitism on host physiology would induce behavioral changes in L. littorea, which in turn would modulate L. littoreas influence on intertidal community composition. Specifically, we hypothesized that C. lingua infection would alter the grazing rate of L. littorea and, consequently, macroalgal communities would develop differently in the presence of infected versus uninfected snails. Our results show that uninfected snails consumed 40% more ephemeral macroalgal biomass than infected snails in the laboratory, probably because the digestive system of infected snails is compromised by C. lingua infection. In the field, this weaker grazing by infected snails resulted in significantly greater expansion of ephemeral macroalgal cover relative to grazing by uninfected snails. By decreasing the per-capita grazing rate of the dominant herbivore, C. lingua indirectly affects the composition of the macroalgal community and may in turn affect other species that depend on macroalgae for resources or habitat structure. In light of the abundance of parasites across systems, we suggest that, through trait-mediated indirect effects, parasites may be a common determinant of structure in ecological communities.

Fishing out marine parasites? Impacts of fishing on rates of parasitism in the ocean.

Among anthropogenic effects on the ocean, fishing is one of the most pervasive and extends deepest into the past. Because fishing reduces the density of fish (reducing transmission efficiency of directly transmitted parasites), selectively removes large fish (which tend to carry more parasites than small fish), and reduces food web complexity (reducing transmission efficiency of trophically transmitted parasites), the removal of fish from the worlds oceans over the course of hundreds of years may be driving a longterm, global decline in fish parasites. There has been growing recognition in recent years that parasites are a critical part of biodiversity and that their loss could substantially alter ecosystem function. Such a loss may be among the last major ecological effects of industrial fishing to be recognized by scientists.

It\'s a myth that protection against disease is a strong and general service of biodiversity conservation: Response to Ostfeld and Keesing

2 Ostfeld, R.S. (2011) Lyme Disease: The Ecology of a Complex System.Oxford University Press3 Ostfeld, R.S. and Keesing, F. (2000) Biodiversity and disease risk: thecase of Lyme disease. Conserv. Biol. 14, 722–7284 Keesing,F.etal.(2006)Effectsofspeciesdiversityondiseaserisk.Ecol.Lett. 9, 485–4985 Ostfeld, R.S. and Keesing, F. (2012) Effects of host diversity oninfectious disease. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 43, 157–1826 Cardinale, B.J. et al. (2012) Biodiversity loss and its impact onhumanity. Nature 486, 59–677 Bonds, M.H. et al. (2012) Disease ecology, biodiversity, and thelatitudinal gradient in income. PLoS Biol. 10, e10014568

How have fisheries affected parasite communities

To understand how fisheries affect parasites, we conducted a meta-analysis of studies that contrasted parasite assemblages in fished and unfished areas. Parasite diversity was lower in hosts from fished areas. Larger hosts had a greater abundance of parasites, suggesting that fishing might reduce the abundance of parasites by selectively removing the largest, most heavily parasitized individuals. After controlling for size, the effect of fishing on parasite abundance varied according to whether the host was fished and the parasites life cycle. Parasites of unfished hosts were more likely to increase in abundance in response to fishing than were parasites of fished hosts, possibly due to compensatory increases in the abundance of unfished hosts. While complex life cycle parasites tended to decline in abundance in response to fishing, directly transmitted parasites tended to increase. Among complex life cycle parasites, those with fished hosts tended to decline in abundance in response to fishing, while those with unfished hosts tended to increase. However, among directly transmitted parasites, responses did not differ between parasites with and without fished hosts. This work suggests that parasite assemblages are likely to change substantially in composition in increasingly fished ecosystems, and that parasite life history and fishing status of the host are important in predicting the response of individual parasite species or groups to fishing.

Habitat heterogeneity drives the host-diversity-begets-parasite-diversity relationship: evidence from experimental and field studies

Despite a century of research into the factors that generate and maintain biodiversity, we know remarkably little about the drivers of parasite diversity. To identify the mechanisms governing parasite diversity, we combined surveys of 8100 amphibian hosts with an outdoor experiment that tested theory developed for free-living species. Our analyses revealed that parasite diversity increased consistently with host diversity due to habitat (i.e. host) heterogeneity, with secondary contributions from parasite colonisation and host abundance. Results of the experiment, in which host diversity was manipulated while parasite colonisation and host abundance were fixed, further reinforced this conclusion. Finally, the coefficient of host diversity on parasite diversity increased with spatial grain, which was driven by differences in their species-area curves: while host richness quickly saturated, parasite richness continued to increase with neighbourhood size. These results offer mechanistic insights into drivers of parasite diversity and provide a hierarchical framework for multi-scale disease research.

Fishing drives declines in fish parasite diversity and has variable effects on parasite abundance

Despite the ubiquity and ecological importance of parasites, relatively few studies have assessed their response to anthropogenic environmental change. Heuristic models have predicted both increases and decreases in parasite abundance in response to human disturbance, with empirical support for both. However, most studies focus on one or a few selected parasite species. Here, we assess the abundance of parasites of seven species of coral reef fishes collected from three fished and three unfished islands of the Line Islands archipelago in the central equatorial Pacific. Because we chose fish hosts that spanned different trophic levels, taxonomic groups, and body sizes, we were able to compare parasite responses across a broad cross section of the total parasite community in the presence and absence of fishing, a major human impact on marine ecosystems. We found that overall parasite species richness was substantially depressed on fished islands, but that the response of parasite abundance varied among parasite taxa: directly transmitted parasites were significantly more abundant on fished than on unfished islands, while the reverse was true for trophically transmitted parasites. This probably arises because trophically transmitted parasites require multiple host species, some of which are the top predators most sensitive to fishing impacts. The increase in directly transmitted parasites appeared to be due to fishing-driven compensatory increases in the abundance of their hosts. Together, these results provide support for the predictions of both heuristic models, and indicate that the direction of fishings impact on parasite abundance is mediated by parasite traits, notably parasite transmission strategies.

Marine protected areas facilitate parasite populations among four fished host species of central Chile.

1. Parasites comprise a substantial proportion of global biodiversity and exert important ecological influences on hosts, communities and ecosystems, but our knowledge of how parasite populations respond to human impacts is in its infancy. 2. Here, we present the results of a natural experiment in which we used a system of highly successful marine protected areas and matched open-access areas in central Chile to assess the influence of fishing-driven biodiversity loss on parasites of exploited fish and invertebrate hosts. We measured the burden of gill parasites for two reef fishes (Cheilodactylus variegatus and Aplodactylus punctatus), trematode parasites for a keyhole limpet (Fissurella latimarginata), and pinnotherid pea crab parasites for a sea urchin (Loxechinus albus). We also measured host density for all four hosts. 3. We found that nearly all parasite species exhibited substantially greater density (# parasites m(-2)) in protected than in open-access areas, but only one parasite species (a gill monogenean of C. variegatus) was more abundant within hosts collected from protected relative to open-access areas. 4. These data indicate that fishing can drive declines in parasite abundance at the parasite population level by reducing the availability of habitat and resources for parasites, but less commonly affects the abundance of parasites at the infrapopulation level (within individual hosts). 5. Considering the substantial ecological role that many parasites play in marine communities, fishing and other human impacts could exert cryptic but important effects on marine community structure and ecosystem functioning via reductions in parasite abundance.

Productivity and fishing pressure drive variability in fish parasite assemblages of the Line Islands, equatorial Pacific

Variability in primary productivity and fishing pressure can shape the abundance, species composition, and diversity of marine life. Though parasites comprise nearly half of marine species, their responses to these important forces remain little explored. We quantified parasite assemblages at two spatial scales, across a gradient in productivity and fishing pressure that spans six coral islands of the Line Islands archipelago and within the largest Line Island, Kiritimati, which experiences a west-to-east gradient in fishing pressure and upwelling-driven productivity. In the across-islands data set, we found that increasing productivity was correlated with increased parasite abundance overall, but that the effects of productivity differed among parasite groups. Trophically transmitted parasites increased in abundance with increasing productivity, but directly transmitted parasites did not exhibit significant changes. This probably arises because productivity has stronger effects on the abundance of the planktonic crustaceans and herbivorous snails that serve as the intermediate hosts of trophically transmitted parasites than on the higher-trophic level fishes that are the sole hosts of directly transmitted parasites. We also found that specialist parasites increased in response to increasing productivity, while generalists did not, possibly because specialist parasites tend to be more strongly limited by host availability than are generalist parasites. After the effect of productivity was controlled for, fishing was correlated with decreases in the abundance of trophically transmitted parasites, while directly transmitted parasites appeared to track host density; we observed increases in the abundance of parasites using hosts that experienced fishing-driven compensatory increases in abundance. The within-island data set confirmed these patterns for the combined effects of productivity and fishing on parasite abundance, suggesting that our conclusions are robust across a span of spatial scales. Overall, these results indicate that there are strong and variable effects of anthropogenic and natural drivers on parasite abundance and taxonomic richness. These effects are likely to be mediated by parasite traits, particularly by parasite transmission strategies.

How Does Space Influence the Relationship Between Host and Parasite Diversity

Abstract Host species richness and parasite species richness are often positively correlated, but the strength of this relationship varies from study to study. What accounts for this variability? Here, we explore the role of spatial scale in mediating the commonly reported positive relationship between host and parasite diversity. Building from ecological theory, we lay out a series of hypotheses for how spatial grain size might influence both the strength and slope of this relationship. Most significantly, we consider how variability in spatial grain size may result in differences in sampling effort that affect estimates of host and parasite richness differently, and we explore the potential for spatial grain to have divergent effects on strength versus slope of the relationship between host and parasite richness. Finally, we examine what empirical data exist to test the outlined hypotheses and conduct a meta-regression of published studies. Our analyses—which detected no significant associations—highlight several factors that compromise our ability to robustly compare the host–parasite richness relationship across contexts, including mismatches between absolute spatial scale and spatial scale of ecological processes as well as variability across and within studies with respect to spatial grain size, taxonomic resolution, definitions of “hosts” and “parasites,” and sampling effort. This work suggests that questions regarding the spatial dependence of the host diversity–parasite diversity relationship may be most-effectively addressed within a single multi-host–multi-parasite system.

Environmental change and the ecology of infectious disease

When and where do human impacts increase disease risk for people and wildlife? More than half of all the infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonoses—pathogens naturally transmitted from animals. Because a substantial proportion of these diseases originate in wildlife, environmental context drives patterns of transmission. But despite the strong influence of environment on zoonotic pathogens, considerable uncertainty exists as to whether and how anthropogenic environmental change modulates disease risk.