Graduate School of Environmental Science, Hokkaido University, N10W5 Sapporo, Hokkaido, 060-0810, Japan.
Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, N10W5 Sapporo, Hokkaido, 060-0810, Japan.
Naturwissenschaften. 2023 Feb 21;110(2):10. doi: 10.1007/s00114-023-01836-x.
Parasites generally increase host vulnerability to predators via host manipulation for trophic transmission and reduction of host activities. Predators also select prey depending on the parasite infection status. Despite such parasites' roles in prey-predator interactions in wild animals, how parasites affect human hunting probability and resource consumption remains unknown. We examined the effects of the ectoparasitic copepod Salmincola cf. markewitschi on fish vulnerability to angling. We found that infected fish were less vulnerable compared with non-infected fish when the fish body condition was low, which was probably due to reduced foraging activity. On the contrary, infected fish were more vulnerable when the host body condition was high, probably due to the compensation of parasites' negative effects. A Twitter analysis also suggested that people avoided eating fish with parasites and that anglers' satisfaction decreased when captured fish were parasitized. Thus, we should consider how animal hunting is affected by parasites not only for catchability but also for avoiding parasite infection sources in many local regions.
寄生虫通常通过宿主操纵来促进营养传递和减少宿主活动，从而增加宿主对捕食者的脆弱性。捕食者也会根据寄生虫感染状况来选择猎物。尽管寄生虫在野生动物的猎物-捕食者相互作用中发挥了作用，但寄生虫如何影响人类的狩猎概率和资源消耗仍然未知。我们研究了外寄生桡足类 Salmincola cf. markewitschi 对鱼类对钓鱼的脆弱性的影响。我们发现，当鱼的身体状况较低时，感染寄生虫的鱼比未感染寄生虫的鱼的脆弱性更低，这可能是由于觅食活动减少所致。相反，当宿主身体状况良好时，感染寄生虫的鱼更容易受到攻击，这可能是由于寄生虫的负面影响得到了补偿。推特分析还表明，人们会避免食用带有寄生虫的鱼，而且当捕获的鱼被寄生虫感染时，钓鱼者的满意度会降低。因此，我们不仅应该考虑寄生虫对可捕获性的影响，还应该考虑在许多地方如何避免寄生虫感染源对动物狩猎的影响。
