Freshwater disease hotspots: Drivers of fine‐scale spatial heterogeneity in trematode parasitism in streams

Falke, Landon P.; Preston, Daniel L.

doi:10.1111/fwb.13856

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…This highlights the need to consider the sequential nature of parasite arrival, and how this can shape parasite distributions (and thus parasite impacts) at the community scale (Karvonen et al, 2019), in addition to inherent host specificity. While the results of our field experiment remain ultimately inconclusive given low final sample size, they emphasise the need to consider the cause of observed parasite host specificity across scales (Falke & Preston, 2022; Thieltges et al, 2011), and quantify their subsequent ecosystem impacts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…While the results of our field experiment remain ultimately inconclusive given low final sample size, they emphasise the need to consider the cause of observed parasite host specificity across scales (Falke & Preston, 2022;Thieltges et al, 2011), and quantify their subsequent ecosystem impacts. parasites significantly alter the clearance rates of freshwater mussels: we observed that the proportional river discharge filtered may change by up to 96% relative to an uninfected host community.…”

Section: Parasites Affect the Clearance Rates Of Freshwater Mussels I...mentioning

confidence: 90%

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Parasitism dramatically alters the ecosystem services provided by freshwater mussels

2022

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1. Parasites can indirectly affect ecosystem function by altering host phenotype, but the trait-mediated impacts of parasitism at an ecosystem level remain poorly characterised. However, understanding the influence of parasites is central to understanding the ecosystem services provided by host species, especially in an era of global environmental change.2. We examined the effect of native (the trematode Rhipidocotyle campanula) and invasive (the bitterling fish Rhodeus amarus) parasites, and their interaction, on the clearance rates of unionid mussels, a dominant ecosystem-engineering group that modify freshwater ecosystems worldwide. We used a combination of field experiments, laboratory experiments and ecological simulations to demonstrate the phenotypic impact of parasites on the functional response of two mussel species across an environmental gradient (suspended particle concentration), and extended this with host and parasite community data to demonstrate the consequences for a real-world ecosystem, the Old West River in Cambridgeshire, England.3. Both parasites altered the clearance rates of their hosts but in contrasting fashion: while R. campanula increased host clearance rates relative to uninfected conspecifics under all conditions, R. amarus supressed clearance rates at high suspended particle concentrations (eutrophic conditions) but elevated them otherwise. The parasites displayed different infection patterns in the two host species, and the invasive R. amarus rarely co-infected mussels with R. campanula.4. Given their disparate effects, the parasites' distributions reversed the relative filtration capacity of the two host species under high vs. low concentrations of suspended particles, demonstrating how differences between the infection patterns of native and invasive parasites, as well as their individual effects, need to be considered. Overall, the proportion of daily river discharge filtered by the combined mussel community changed by up to 96% in the presence of parasites. By incorporating multiple host species and multiple parasite species, we provide ecologically relevant evidence for the trait-mediated effects of parasites on ecosystem processes. 5. Our study demonstrates that parasitism can significantly alter wider ecosystem processes through changing the phenotype of their host. Future work onThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Parasites Affect the Clearance Rates Of Freshwater Mussels I...mentioning

confidence: 90%

Parasitism dramatically alters the ecosystem services provided by freshwater mussels

2022

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

Svatos¹,

Falke²,

Preston³

2023

Oecologia

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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.

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High parasite prevalence in an ecosystem engineer correlated with both local- and landscape-level factors

Ziegler,

Atencio,

Carroll

et al. 2024

Oecologia

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Freshwater disease hotspots: Drivers of fine‐scale spatial heterogeneity in trematode parasitism in streams

Cited by 7 publications

References 82 publications

Parasitism dramatically alters the ecosystem services provided by freshwater mussels

Parasitism dramatically alters the ecosystem services provided by freshwater mussels

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

High parasite prevalence in an ecosystem engineer correlated with both local- and landscape-level factors

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