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Industrial bees: The impact of apicultural intensification on local disease prevalence

1. It is generally thought that the intensification of farming will result in higher disease prevalences, although there is little specific modelling testing this idea. Focussing on honeybees, we build multi‐colony models to inform how “apicultural intensification” is predicted to impact honeybee pa...

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Autores principales: Bartlett, Lewis J., Rozins, Carly, Brosi, Berry J., Delaplane, Keith S., de Roode, Jacobus C., White, Andrew, Wilfert, Lena, Boots, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6771535/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31588148
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13461
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author Bartlett, Lewis J.
Rozins, Carly
Brosi, Berry J.
Delaplane, Keith S.
de Roode, Jacobus C.
White, Andrew
Wilfert, Lena
Boots, Michael
author_facet Bartlett, Lewis J.
Rozins, Carly
Brosi, Berry J.
Delaplane, Keith S.
de Roode, Jacobus C.
White, Andrew
Wilfert, Lena
Boots, Michael
author_sort Bartlett, Lewis J.
collection PubMed
description 1. It is generally thought that the intensification of farming will result in higher disease prevalences, although there is little specific modelling testing this idea. Focussing on honeybees, we build multi‐colony models to inform how “apicultural intensification” is predicted to impact honeybee pathogen epidemiology at the apiary scale. 2. We used both agent‐based and analytical models to show that three linked aspects of apicultural intensification (increased population sizes, changes in population network structure and increased between‐colony transmission) are unlikely to greatly increase disease prevalence in apiaries. Principally this is because even low‐intensity apiculture exhibits high disease prevalence. 3. The greatest impacts of apicultural intensification are found for diseases with relatively low R(0) (basic reproduction number), however, such diseases cause little overall disease prevalence and, therefore, the impacts of intensification are minor. Furthermore, the smallest impacts of intensification are for diseases with high R(0) values, which we argue are typical of important honeybee diseases. 4. Policy Implications: Our findings contradict the idea that apicultural intensification by crowding honeybee colonies in large, dense apiaries leads to notably higher disease prevalences for established honeybee pathogens. More broadly, our work demonstrates the need for informative models of all agricultural systems and management practices in order to understand the implications of management changes on diseases.
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spelling pubmed-67715352019-10-03 Industrial bees: The impact of apicultural intensification on local disease prevalence Bartlett, Lewis J. Rozins, Carly Brosi, Berry J. Delaplane, Keith S. de Roode, Jacobus C. White, Andrew Wilfert, Lena Boots, Michael J Appl Ecol Research Articles 1. It is generally thought that the intensification of farming will result in higher disease prevalences, although there is little specific modelling testing this idea. Focussing on honeybees, we build multi‐colony models to inform how “apicultural intensification” is predicted to impact honeybee pathogen epidemiology at the apiary scale. 2. We used both agent‐based and analytical models to show that three linked aspects of apicultural intensification (increased population sizes, changes in population network structure and increased between‐colony transmission) are unlikely to greatly increase disease prevalence in apiaries. Principally this is because even low‐intensity apiculture exhibits high disease prevalence. 3. The greatest impacts of apicultural intensification are found for diseases with relatively low R(0) (basic reproduction number), however, such diseases cause little overall disease prevalence and, therefore, the impacts of intensification are minor. Furthermore, the smallest impacts of intensification are for diseases with high R(0) values, which we argue are typical of important honeybee diseases. 4. Policy Implications: Our findings contradict the idea that apicultural intensification by crowding honeybee colonies in large, dense apiaries leads to notably higher disease prevalences for established honeybee pathogens. More broadly, our work demonstrates the need for informative models of all agricultural systems and management practices in order to understand the implications of management changes on diseases. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019-07-16 2019-09 /pmc/articles/PMC6771535/ /pubmed/31588148 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13461 Text en © 2019 The Authors. Journal of Applied Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Bartlett, Lewis J.
Rozins, Carly
Brosi, Berry J.
Delaplane, Keith S.
de Roode, Jacobus C.
White, Andrew
Wilfert, Lena
Boots, Michael
Industrial bees: The impact of apicultural intensification on local disease prevalence
title Industrial bees: The impact of apicultural intensification on local disease prevalence
title_full Industrial bees: The impact of apicultural intensification on local disease prevalence
title_fullStr Industrial bees: The impact of apicultural intensification on local disease prevalence
title_full_unstemmed Industrial bees: The impact of apicultural intensification on local disease prevalence
title_short Industrial bees: The impact of apicultural intensification on local disease prevalence
title_sort industrial bees: the impact of apicultural intensification on local disease prevalence
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6771535/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31588148
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13461
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