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Significant reductions of host abundance weakly impact infection intensity of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis

Infectious diseases are considered major threats to biodiversity, however strategies to mitigate their impacts in the natural world are scarce and largely unsuccessful. Chytridiomycosis is responsible for the decline of hundreds of amphibian species worldwide, but an effective disease management str...

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Autores principales: Bosch, Jaime, Carrascal, Luis M., Manica, Andrea, Garner, Trenton W. J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7703926/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33253322
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242913
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author Bosch, Jaime
Carrascal, Luis M.
Manica, Andrea
Garner, Trenton W. J.
author_facet Bosch, Jaime
Carrascal, Luis M.
Manica, Andrea
Garner, Trenton W. J.
author_sort Bosch, Jaime
collection PubMed
description Infectious diseases are considered major threats to biodiversity, however strategies to mitigate their impacts in the natural world are scarce and largely unsuccessful. Chytridiomycosis is responsible for the decline of hundreds of amphibian species worldwide, but an effective disease management strategy that could be applied across natural habitats is still lacking. In general amphibian larvae can be easily captured, offering opportunities to ascertain the impact of altering the abundance of hosts, considered to be a key parameter affecting the severity of the disease. Here, we report the results of two experiments to investigate how altering host abundance affects infection intensity in amphibian populations of a montane area of Central Spain suffering from lethal amphibian chytridiomycosis. Our laboratory-based experiment supported the conclusion that varying density had a significant effect on infection intensity when salamander larvae were housed at low densities. Our field experiment showed that reducing the abundance of salamander larvae in the field also had a significant, but weak, impact on infection the following year, but only when removals were extreme. While this suggests adjusting host abundance as a mitigation strategy to reduce infection intensity could be useful, our evidence suggests only heavy culling efforts will succeed, which may run contrary to objectives for conservation.
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spelling pubmed-77039262020-12-03 Significant reductions of host abundance weakly impact infection intensity of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis Bosch, Jaime Carrascal, Luis M. Manica, Andrea Garner, Trenton W. J. PLoS One Research Article Infectious diseases are considered major threats to biodiversity, however strategies to mitigate their impacts in the natural world are scarce and largely unsuccessful. Chytridiomycosis is responsible for the decline of hundreds of amphibian species worldwide, but an effective disease management strategy that could be applied across natural habitats is still lacking. In general amphibian larvae can be easily captured, offering opportunities to ascertain the impact of altering the abundance of hosts, considered to be a key parameter affecting the severity of the disease. Here, we report the results of two experiments to investigate how altering host abundance affects infection intensity in amphibian populations of a montane area of Central Spain suffering from lethal amphibian chytridiomycosis. Our laboratory-based experiment supported the conclusion that varying density had a significant effect on infection intensity when salamander larvae were housed at low densities. Our field experiment showed that reducing the abundance of salamander larvae in the field also had a significant, but weak, impact on infection the following year, but only when removals were extreme. While this suggests adjusting host abundance as a mitigation strategy to reduce infection intensity could be useful, our evidence suggests only heavy culling efforts will succeed, which may run contrary to objectives for conservation. Public Library of Science 2020-11-30 /pmc/articles/PMC7703926/ /pubmed/33253322 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242913 Text en © 2020 Bosch et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Bosch, Jaime
Carrascal, Luis M.
Manica, Andrea
Garner, Trenton W. J.
Significant reductions of host abundance weakly impact infection intensity of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis
title Significant reductions of host abundance weakly impact infection intensity of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis
title_full Significant reductions of host abundance weakly impact infection intensity of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis
title_fullStr Significant reductions of host abundance weakly impact infection intensity of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis
title_full_unstemmed Significant reductions of host abundance weakly impact infection intensity of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis
title_short Significant reductions of host abundance weakly impact infection intensity of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis
title_sort significant reductions of host abundance weakly impact infection intensity of batrachochytrium dendrobatidis
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7703926/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33253322
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242913
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