Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, University of Colorado, Ramaley N122, UCB 334, Boulder, CO, 80305, USA.
Ecol Lett. 2014 Apr;17(4):445-53. doi: 10.1111/ele.12244. Epub 2014 Jan 8.
Multi-species experiments are critical for identifying the mechanisms through which climate change influences population dynamics and community interactions within ecological systems, including infectious diseases. Using a host-parasite system involving freshwater snails, amphibians and trematode parasites, we conducted a year-long, outdoor experiment to evaluate how warming affected net parasite production, the timing of infection and the resultant pathology. Warming of 3 °C caused snail intermediate hosts to release parasites 9 months earlier and increased infected snail mortality by fourfold, leading to decreased overlap between amphibians and parasites. As a result, warming halved amphibian infection loads and reduced pathology by 67%, despite comparable total parasite production across temperature treatments. These results demonstrate that climate-disease theory should be expanded to account for predicted changes in host and parasite phenology, which may often be more important than changes in total parasite output for predicting climate-driven changes in disease risk.
多物种实验对于确定气候变化影响生态系统内种群动态和群落相互作用（包括传染病）的机制至关重要。我们利用涉及淡水蜗牛、两栖动物和吸虫寄生虫的宿主-寄生虫系统，进行了为期一年的户外实验，以评估变暖如何影响净寄生虫产量、感染时间以及由此产生的病理学。变暖 3°C 导致蜗牛中间宿主提前释放寄生虫 9 个月，并使受感染蜗牛的死亡率增加四倍，导致两栖动物和寄生虫之间的重叠减少。结果，尽管在不同温度处理下总寄生虫产量相当，但变暖使两栖动物感染负荷减半，病理学减少了 67%。这些结果表明，疾病气候理论应该扩大到考虑宿主和寄生虫物候学的预期变化，这对于预测气候驱动的疾病风险变化可能比总寄生虫输出的变化更为重要。
