Host and parasite thermal ecology jointly determine the effect of climate warming on epidemic dynamics.

ABSTRACT: Host-parasite systems have intricately coupled life cycles, but each interactor can respond differently to changes in environmental variables like temperature. Although vital to predicting how parasitism will respond to climate change, thermal responses of both host and parasite in key traits affecting infection dynamics have rarely been quantified. Through temperature-controlled experiments on an ectothermic host-parasite system, we demonstrate an offset in the thermal optima for survival of infected and uninfected hosts and parasite production. We combine experimentally derived thermal performance curves with field data on seasonal host abundance and parasite prevalence to parameterize an epidemiological model and forecast the dynamical responses to plausible future climate-warming scena

SUBMITTER: Gehman AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5789902 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature