Corresponding Author: Alyssa Gehman, alyssamina@gmail.com
Summary Writer: Trippe Ross, tross312@uga.edu
Host organisms and their parasites undergo physiological changes in response to climate warming, and these responses may alter the spread and transmission of infectious diseases. Ectotherms are especially sensitive to environmental temperature, and climate warming may reduce or increase disease transmission potential in ectothermic vectors of human pathogens depending on their region. Here, Odum School of Ecology alumni Alyssa Gehman and CEID members Richard Hall and Jeb Byers examine the effects of temperature warming on E. depressus, an oyster reef-dwelling crab, and L. panopaei, a rhizocephalan parasite which castrates its host and develops an external organ for parasite reproduction. Gehman and Byers developed an experiment that examined crabs at three stages of L. panopaei infection: uninfected, exposed, and infected. Gehman then identified optimal temperatures for crab survival and successful parasite reproduction by exposing each group to temperature treatments. Using the information from these experiments, Gehman and Hall developed a model to predict what will happen to these organisms as the climate warms. Their model predicted sharp declines in parasite prevalence associated with climate warming, with extinction in the local area, Savannah, GA, predicted with a rise of 2° Celsius. However, the northern portion of the parasite’s range may see local increases in transmission. This work demonstrates the need to measure host and parasite responses to climate change, and how this can be used to predict infection response.
A full press release from the Odum School of Ecology is found here.
Gehman, Alyssa-Lois M., Richard J. Hall, and James E. Byers. “Host and Parasite Thermal Ecology Jointly Determine the Effect of Climate Warming on Epidemic Dynamics.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, January 8, 2018, 201705067. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1705067115. [Online]