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Climate forcing of an emerging pathogenic fungus across a montane multi-host community

Clare, FC; Halder, JB; Daniel, O; Bielby, J; Semenov, MA; Jombart, T; Loyau, A; ... Fisher, MC; + view all (2016) Climate forcing of an emerging pathogenic fungus across a montane multi-host community. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , 371 (1709) , Article 20150454. 10.1098/rstb.2015.0454. Green open access

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Abstract

Changes in the timings of seasonality as a result of anthropogenic climate change are predicted to occur over the coming decades. While this is expected to have widespread impacts on the dynamics of infectious disease through environmental forcing, empirical data are lacking. Here, we investigated whether seasonality, specifically the timing of spring ice-thaw, affected susceptibility to infection by the emerging pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) across a montane community of amphibians that are suffering declines and extirpations as a consequence of this infection. We found a robust temporal association between the timing of the spring thaw and Bd infection in two host species, where we show that an early onset of spring forced high prevalences of infection. A third highly susceptible species (the midwife toad, Alytes obstetricans) maintained a high prevalence of infection independent of time of spring thaw. Our data show that perennially overwintering midwife toad larvae may act as a year-round reservoir of infection with variation in time of spring thaw determining the extent to which infection spills over into sympatric species. We used future temperature projections based on global climate models to demonstrate that the timing of spring thaw in this region will advance markedly by the 2050s, indicating that climate change will further force the severity of infection. Our findings on the effect of annual variability on multi-host infection dynamics show that the community-level impact of fungal infectious disease on biodiversity will need to be re-evaluated in the face of climate change. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Tackling emerging fungal threats to animal health, food security and ecosystem resilience’.

Type: Article
Title: Climate forcing of an emerging pathogenic fungus across a montane multi-host community
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2015.0454
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0454
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1513269
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