Disease's hidden death toll: Using parasite aggregation patterns to quantify landscape-level host mortality in a wildlife system.

ABSTRACT: World-wide, infectious diseases represent a major source of mortality in humans and livestock. For wildlife populations, disease-induced mortality is likely even greater, but remains notoriously difficult to estimate-especially for endemic infections. Approaches for quantifying wildlife mortality due to endemic infections have historically been limited by an inability to directly observe wildlife mortality in nature. Here we address a question that can rarely be answered for endemic pathogens of wildlife: what are the population- and landscape-level effects of infection on host mortality? We combined laboratory experiments, extensive field data and novel mathematical models to indirectly estimate the magnitude of mortality induced by an endemic, virulent trematode parasite (Ribeiroia ondat

SUBMITTER: Wilber MQ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9009358 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature