Exposure and susceptibility: The Twin Pillars of infection

Sweeny, Amy R.; Albery, Gregory F.

doi:10.1111/1365-2435.14065

Cited by 23 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 136 publications

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“…The prevalence‐climate relationships observed can be interactively induced by climate‐driven dynamics in intrinsic susceptibility and extrinsic exposure (Sweeny and Albery 2022) to a pathogenic microbial taxon. The current dataset was unable to resolve the relative contributions of intrinsic susceptibility and extrinsic exposure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Continental‐scale climatic gradients of pathogenic microbial taxa in birds and bats

Xu,

Poosakkannu,

Suominen

et al. 2023

Ecography

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The connections of climatic variables to zoonotic and wildlife diseases remain uncertain. Here, we compiled a systematic database for the prevalence of 121 pathogenic microbial taxa in birds (ca 376 species) and bats (ca 39 species), including 11 939 observations from over 450 000 individuals across Europe and surrounding regions. We modelled the potential connection of climatic variables with the prevalence of 75 pathogenic microbial taxa at a multi‐pathogenic‐taxa level and of 17 most‐studied pathogenic taxa at a single‐pathogenic‐taxon level. According to the multi‐taxa model, the prevalence of bacterial taxa was positively associated with temperature, while this association was significantly weaker for eukaryotes and viruses. The prevalence of bacterial taxa was negatively associated with rainfall, while viruses showed a positive association with rainfall. These associations between climatic variables and prevalence of pathogenic taxa were not different between bird and bat hosts. According to the single‐taxon models, the prevalence of influenza A viruses, Plasmodium, and several bacterial taxa in birds and bats was positively associated with temperature. Rainfall showed positive associations with the prevalence of Usutu, Sindbis and Influenza A viruses but the directions of significant associations varied among bacterial taxa. Strikingly, this was evidenced also between bacterial taxa that share hosts and transmission mechanism hinting towards hitherto unknown features on pathogen ecology, e.g. Salmonella versus Campylobacter and Anaplasma versus Borrelia. Our results suggest that rising temperature and increasing precipitation will accelerate the threat of bird‐ and bat‐associated bacterial and viral pathogens to wildlife, domesticated animals and humans, respectively. However, the idiosyncratic relationships with climatic conditions among pathogenic taxa highlight the need for pathogen‐specific predictive models to understand future pathogen distributions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Continental‐scale climatic gradients of pathogenic microbial taxa in birds and bats

Xu,

Poosakkannu,

Suominen

et al. 2023

Ecography

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“…Infection is driven by two factors, host susceptibility and the likelihood of exposure, which together make up the transmission process (Sweeny & Albery, 2022). Changes in temperature can affect both parts of this interaction by altering innate host susceptibility, such as through changes in immunity (Srygley & Jaronski, 2022; Wojda, 2017), or by varying the risk of infection, for example, by modifying host behavior (Baverstock et al, 2010; Parker et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Warmer temperatures reduce the transmission of a virus in a gregarious forest insect

MacDonald,

Myers,

Cory

2023

Ecology

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Understanding how climate warming will influence species interactions is a key question in ecology and predicting changes in the prevalence of disease outbreaks is particularly challenging. Ectotherms are likely to be more influenced by climatic changes as temperature governs their growth, feeding, development and behaviour. We test the hypothesis that pathogen transmission and host mortality will increase at warmer temperatures using a cyclic forest insect, the western tent caterpillar (WTC), Malacosoma californicum pluviale, and its baculovirus. The virus causes population declines at peak host density. WTC are gregarious and clustering is predicted to increase the risk of within family infection; however, how temperature influences this has not been examined. We investigated the impact of temperature on different components of the transmission process in order to pinpoint the possible mechanisms involved. In the laboratory, leaf consumption increased linearly with rising temperature between 15 and 30°C. Insects died more rapidly from virus infection as temperature increased, but this did not translate into differences in the production of viral transmission stages. To examine the influence of temperature on virus transmission we created a temperature difference between two greenhouses containing potted red alder trees, Alnus rubra. The cooler greenhouse (mean 19.5°C) was roughly similar to ambient temperatures in the field, while the warmer greenhouse was 10°C higher (mean 29°C). As predicted, both larval movement and feeding were higher at the warmer temperature, while the likelihood of the pre‐infected, inoculum larvae dying on the tents was twice as high in the cooler greenhouse. This resulted in increased virus mortality and a higher transmission parameter under cooler conditions. Therefore, we suggest that, contrary to our prediction, the reduced movement of infected larvae at colder temperatures increased the risk of infection in these gregarious insects, and had a greater impact on virus transmission than the increased activity of the susceptible larvae in warmer conditions. Long‐term population data from the field, however, show no relationship between temperature and infection levels, suggesting that local changes in virus transmission might not scale up to population infection levels.

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“…An animal's disease burden is dependent on a combination of its susceptibility and exposure to parasites [1,2]. As an animal ages, it undergoes a suite of physiological changes [3], many of which affect the immune system [4][5][6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An animal’s disease burden is dependent on a combination of its susceptibility and exposure to parasites [1,2], As an animal ages, it undergoes a suite of physiological changes [3], many of which affect the immune system [4–6], Because these changes often result in increased susceptibility to infection, it is usually expected that individuals will exhibit a greater prevalence or burden of parasites as they age [6–8]. However, this process is potentially confounded by a number of age-related processes: first, the immune system can change and adapt in many other ways over the lifespan; most importantly, individuals acquire adaptive immunity to certain parasites as they become infected, potentially leading to an increase in immunity to these particular parasites [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different helminth parasites show contrasting relationships with age in a wild ungulate

Albery

Morris

et al. 2022

Preprint

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As animals age they often exhibit substantial physiological and behavioural changes that can drive changes in infection status over the lifespan. Generally, immunosenescence is expected to lead to greater infection in older individuals, but this process could be confounded or counteracted by changes in behaviour, selective disappearance of certain individuals, or a range of immune processes. Here, we uncover contrasting age-related patterns of infection across three different helminth parasites in wild adult red deer (Cervus elaphus). Counts of strongyle nematodes (order: Strongylida) increased with age, while counts of liver fluke (Fasciola hepatica) and tissue worm (Elaphostrongylus cervi) decreased. These relationships could not be explained by selective disappearance of certain individuals or changes in behaviour, suggesting that immune changes could be responsible. Additionally, we found a positive relationship between social connectedness and strongyle infection, implying that previously documented age-related decreases in social behaviour may minimise exposure, reducing the negative effects of immunosenescence. These findings demonstrate that burdens of different parasites can show contrasting changes over an individual's lifespan depending on a complex suite of intrinsic and extrinsic factors.

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Exposure and susceptibility: The Twin Pillars of infection

Abstract: 2021). Simply examining heterogeneity in parasitism across a population is insufficient to identify the mechanisms producing it, because

Cited by 23 publications

References 136 publications

Continental‐scale climatic gradients of pathogenic microbial taxa in birds and bats

Continental‐scale climatic gradients of pathogenic microbial taxa in birds and bats

Warmer temperatures reduce the transmission of a virus in a gregarious forest insect

Different helminth parasites show contrasting relationships with age in a wild ungulate

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