Downstream Effects: Impact of Antibiotic Pollution on an Aquatic Host-Parasite Interaction

Melchiorre, Hannah G.; Gutierrez, Stephanie O; Minchella, Dennis J.; Vannatta, J. Trevor

doi:10.1101/2020.11.07.372813

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Anthropogenic chemicals are ubiquitous in daily human life, with more than 100,000 chemicals registered in the United States and European Union for use in medicine, agriculture and industrial settings (Grube et al, 2011). Anthropogenic pollutants such as pesticides (Coors et al, 2008), per‐and polyfluoroalkyl substances (Brown et al, 2021), roadway deicing salts (Milotic et al, 2017) and antibiotics (Melchiorre et al, 2020) can alter host competence by modifying host susceptibility to parasites. Importantly, pollutant exposure can differentially influence host susceptibility between species, increasing or decreasing for some hosts and having no effect for others (Milotic et al, 2017; Robinson et al, 2019; Saha et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Host exposure to a common pollutant can influence diversity–disease relationships

Buss,

Hua

2023

Journal of Animal Ecology

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Hosts and parasites are embedded in communities where species richness and composition can influence disease outcomes (diversity–disease relationships). The direction and magnitude of diversity–disease relationships are influenced by variation in competence (ability to support and transmit infections) of hosts in a community. However, host susceptibility to parasites, which mediates host competence, is not static and is influenced by environmental factors, including pollutants. Despite the role that pollutants can play in augmenting host susceptibility, how pollutants influence diversity–disease dynamics is not well understood. Using an amphibian–trematode model, we tested how NaCl influences diversity–disease dynamics. We predicted that NaCl exposure can alter relative susceptibility of host species to trematodes, leading to cascading effects on the diversity–disease relationship. To test these predictions, we exposed hosts to benign or NaCl environments and generated communities that differed in number and composition of host species. We exposed these communities to trematodes and measured disease outcomes at the community (total infections across all hosts within a community) and species levels (average number of infections per host species within a community). Host species differed in their relative susceptibility to trematodes when exposed to NaCl. Consequently, at the community level (total infections across all hosts within a community), we only detected diversity–disease relationships (dilution effects) in communities where hosts were exposed to NaCl. At the species level, disease outcomes (average number of infections/species) and whether multi‐species communities supported lower number of infections relative to single‐species communities depended on community composition. Notably, however, as with overall community infection, diversity–disease relationships only emerged when hosts were exposed to NaCl. Synthesis. Pollutants are ubiquitous in nature and can influence disease dynamics across a number of host–parasite systems. Here, we show that NaCl exposure can alter the relative susceptibility of host species to parasites, influencing the relationship between biodiversity and disease at both community and species levels. Collectively, our study contributes to the limited knowledge surrounding environmental mediators of host susceptibility and their influence on diversity–disease dynamics.

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