Global climate change is increasing the frequency of unpredictable weather conditions; however, it remains unclear how species‐level and geographic factors, including body size and latitude, moderate impacts of unusually warm or cool temperatures on disease. Because larger and lower‐latitude hosts generally have slower acclimation times than smaller and higher‐latitude hosts, we hypothesised that their disease susceptibility increases under ‘thermal mismatches’ or differences between baseline climate and the temperature during surveying for disease. Here, we examined how thermal mismatches interact with body size, life stage, habitat, latitude, elevation, phylogeny and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) conservation status to predict infection prevalence of the chytrid fungus
Environmental temperature is a crucial abiotic factor that influences the success of ectothermic organisms, including hosts and pathogens in disease systems. One example is the amphibian chytrid fungus,
- Award ID(s):
- 1750113
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10447008
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Ecology and Evolution
- Volume:
- 11
- Issue:
- 24
- ISSN:
- 2045-7758
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 17920-17931
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd ) in a global analysis of 32 291 amphibian hosts. As hypothesised, we found that the susceptibility of larger hosts and hosts from lower latitudes toBd was influenced by thermal mismatches. Furthermore, hosts of conservation concern were more susceptible than others following thermal mismatches, suggesting that thermal mismatches might have contributed to recent amphibian declines. -
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Abstract Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) is a pathogenic fungus that has devastated amphibian populations globally by causing the disease chytridiomycosis.Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis is capable of infecting non‐amphibian hosts, such as crayfish, and has been detected on reptile and bird species. Given the taxonomic heterogeneity in the known hosts and vectors of Bd, it is likely that there is a diversity of undiscovered non‐amphibian hosts of the fungus.Here, we investigated whether Bd could survive on freshwater snails (
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