Large-scale disease patterns explained by climatic seasonality and host traits
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ECOSYSTEM ECOLOGY – ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Large‑scale disease patterns explained by climatic seasonality and host traits Antoine Filion1 · Alan Eriksson2 · Fátima Jorge1 · Chris N. Niebuhr3 · Robert Poulin1 Received: 28 January 2020 / Accepted: 9 October 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Understanding factors affecting the distribution of vector-borne diseases in space and across species is of prime importance to conservation ecologists. Identifying the underlying patterns of disease requires a perspective encompassing large spatial scales. However, few studies have investigated disease ecology from a macroecological perspective. Hence, we use a global disease database to uncover worldwide infection patterns using avian malaria (Plasmodium) as a model for vector-borne disease transmission. Using data on 678 bird species from 442 locations, we show that environmental variables likely to synchronize bird and vector abundance are the key factors dictating infection risk for birds. Moreover, direct effects of host traits on exposure risk as well as potential trade-offs in resource allocation were also shown to affect disease susceptibility, with larger bird species being more prone to infection. Our results suggest that considering evolutionary strategies and factors influencing spatial overlap between hosts and vectors is crucial for understanding worldwide patterns of disease transmission success. Keywords Abiotic regulation · Avian malaria · Co-evolutionary interplay · Comparative method · Disease macroecology · Host susceptibility · Plasmodium
Introduction Diseases act as a major selective force regulating wildlife populations, exerting pressure at both individual and population levels by influencing reproduction, survival, and/or dispersal of susceptible individuals (Anderson and May 1978; Scott 1988; Hudson and Greenman 1998; Tompkins et al. 2011; McDonald et al. 2017). In the context of current Communicated by Indrikis Krams. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04782-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Antoine Filion [email protected] 1
Department of Zoology, University of Otago, 340 Great King St, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand
2
Programa de Pós‑Graduação em Ecologia e Conservação, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul 79070‑900, Brazil
3
Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, PO Box 69040, Lincoln 7640, New Zealand
efforts to protect wildlife, there is an urgent need to identify the underlying mechanisms that regulate disease occurrence in wildlife worldwide. Macroecology aims to understand large-scale patterns arising from complex mechanistic ecological processes, with the spatial distribution of organisms being at the core of this approach (Keith et al. 2012), thus providing an ideal framework to investigate large-scale patterns of disease occurrence. Indeed, by analysing global trends and factors associat
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