Disturbance and disease: host–parasite interactions in freshwater streams remain stable following wildfire

Abstract

Increases in the intensity and frequency of wild res highlight the need to understand how re disturbance affects ecological interactions. Though the effects of wild re on free-living aquatic communities are relatively well-studied, how host-parasite interactions respond to re disturbance is largely unexplored.Our study investigated the effects of wild re on trematode parasites and their intermediate snail hosts using a Before-After-Control-Impact design. We surveyed 10 stream sites (5 burned and 5 unburned) in the Willamette River Basin, Oregon and quanti ed host infection status and trematode community structure one year before and two years after historic wild res. Despite the severity of the wild res, snail host populations appeared resilient, without signi cant shifts in population characteristics. We detected nine taxa of trematode parasites and overall prevalence of infection remained consistent over the threeyear study period. However, at the taxon-speci c level, we found evidence that infection probability by one trematode decreased and one increased after re. In a larger dataset focusing on the rst year after re (9 burned, 8 unburned sites), we found evidence for subtle differences in trematode community structure, including higher Shannon diversity and evenness at the burned sites. Taken together, our results suggest that host-parasite interactions were remarkably stable for most taxa; for trematodes that did show responses, changes in abundance or behavior of de nitive hosts that input infectious stages to the aquatic environment may underlie observed patterns. These results provide a useful rst step in evaluating the broader utility of parasites as bioindicators of ecosystem changes following wild re disturbance. permits to access our survey sites and collect invertebrate specimens (Permits #314.24384; #26611). We would like to thank F. Carvallo, J. Trujillo, and the Preston Lab for their assistance with manuscript preparation.