Infectious disease, shifting climates, and opportunistic predators: cumulative factors potentially impacting wild salmon declines.

ABSTRACT: Emerging diseases are impacting animals under high-density culture, yet few studies assess their importance to wild populations. Microparasites selected for enhanced virulence in culture settings should be less successful maintaining infectivity in wild populations, as once the host dies, there are limited opportunities to infect new individuals. Instead, moderately virulent microparasites persisting for long periods across multiple environments are of greatest concern. Evolved resistance to endemic microparasites may reduce susceptibilities, but as barriers to microparasite distributions are weakened, and environments become more stressful, unexposed populations may be impacted and pathogenicity enhanced. We provide an overview of the evolutionary and ecological impacts of infectious dise

SUBMITTER: Miller KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4227861 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature