Disentangling interactions among mercury, immunity and infection in a Neotropical bat community.

ABSTRACT: 1. Contaminants such as mercury are pervasive and can have immunosuppressive effects on wildlife. Impaired immunity could be important for forecasting pathogen spillover, as many land-use changes that generate mercury contamination also bring wildlife into close contact with humans and domestic animals. However, the interactions among contaminants, immunity and infection are difficult to study in natural systems, and empirical tests of possible directional relationships remain rare. 2. We capitalized on extreme mercury variation in a diverse bat community in Belize to test association among contaminants, immunity and infection. By comparing a previous dataset of bats sampled in 2014 with new data from 2017, representing a period of rapid agricultural land conversion, we first confirmed bat

SUBMITTER: Becker DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8078557 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature