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1. Interbirth intervals in wild baboons: Environmental predictors and hormonal correlates

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23407  

   Gesquiere, Laurence R. ; Altmann, Jeanne ; Archie, Elizabeth A. ; Alberts, Susan C. ( February 2018 , American Journal of Physical Anthropology)

   Interbirth intervals (IBIs) are a key metric of female reproductive success; understanding how they are regulated by environmental, social, and demographic factors can provide insight into sources of variance in female fitness.

   Using 36 years of reproductive data on 490 IBIs for 160 wild female baboons, we identified sources of variance in the duration of IBIs and of their component phases: postpartum amenorrhea (PPA), sexual cycling, and pregnancy. We also examined how body fat and fecal hormone concentrations varied during female IBIs.

   We found that IBIs tended to be shorter (reproduction was accelerated) when female traits and environmental variables promoted energy acquisition, but with different specific effects for different component phases of the IBI. We also found that females lost a substantial amount of body fat during PPA, indicating that PPA imposes accumulating energetic costs as it progresses. Prior to cycle resumption females began to regain body fat; body fat was stable across the cycling phase and increased throughout most of pregnancy. However, body fat scores per se were not associated with the duration of any of the component phases. Finally, we found that fecal glucocorticoid concentrations decreased as PPA progressed, suggesting a decline in energetic stress over this phase. Fecal progestogen and estrogen concentrations changed over time during sexual cycling; the direction of these changes depended on the phase of the sexual cycle (luteal versus early or late follicular phases).

   Our study lends insight into the energetic constraints on female primate reproduction, revealing how female environments, changes in body fat, and steroid hormone concentrations relate to IBI duration and to reproductive readiness.

    

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2. External disturbances impact helminth–host interactions by affecting dynamics of infection, parasite traits, and host immune responses

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5805  

   Cattadori, Isabella M. ; Pathak, Ashutosh K. ; Ferrari, Matthew J. ( November 2019 , Ecology and Evolution)

   External perturbations, such as multispecies infections or anthelmintic treatments, can alter host–parasite interactions with consequences on the dynamics of infection. While the overall profile of infection might appear fundamentally conserved at the host population level, perturbations can disproportionately affect components of parasite demography or host responses, and ultimately impact parasite fitness and long‐term persistence.

   We took an immuno‐epidemiological approach to this reasoning and examined a rabbit–helminth system where animals were trickle‐dosed with either one or two helminth species, treated halfway through the experiment with an anthelmintic and reinfected one month later following the same initial regime. Parasite traits (body length and fecundity) and host immune responses (cytokines, transcription factors, antibodies) were quantified at fixed time points and compared before and after drug treatment, and between single and dual infections.

   Findings indicated a resistant host phenotype toTrichostrongylus retortaeformiswhere abundance, body length, and fecundity were regulated by a protective immune response. In contrast,Graphidium strigosumaccumulated in the host and, while it stimulated a clear immune reaction, many genes were downregulated both following reinfection and in dual infection, suggestive of a low host resistance.

   External perturbations affected parasite fecundity, including body length and number of eggs in utero, more significantly than abundance; however, there was no consistency in the parasite‐immune relationships.

   Disentangling the processes affecting parasite life history, and how they relate to host responses, can provide a better understanding of how external disturbances impact disease severity and transmission, and how parasites strategies adjust to secure persistence at the host and the population level.

    

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3. Infectivity of the parasite Metschnikowia bicuspidata is decreased by time spent as a transmission spore, but exposure to phycotoxins in the water column has no effect

   https://doi.org/10.1111/fwb.14082  

   Sánchez, Kristel F. ; Zhong, Baili ; Agudelo, Jorge A. ; Duffy, Meghan A. ( April 2023 , Freshwater Biology)

   Transmission from one host to another is a crucial component of parasite fitness. For some aquatic parasites, transmission occurs via a free‐living stage that spends time in the water, awaiting an encounter with a new host. These parasite transmission stages can be impacted by biotic and abiotic factors that influence the parasite's ability to successfully infect or grow in a new host.

   Here we tested whether time spent in the water column and/or exposure to common cyanobacterial toxins impacted parasite transmission stages. More specifically, we tested whether the infectivity, within host growth, and virulence of the fungal parasiteMetschnikowia bicuspidatachanged as a result of time spent in the water or from exposure to cyanotoxins in the water column. We exposed parasite transmission spores to different levels of one of two ecologically important cyanotoxins, microcystin‐LR and anatoxin‐a, and factorially manipulated the amount of time spores were incubated in water. We removed the toxins and used those same spores to infect one genotype of the common lake zooplanktonDaphnia dentifera.

   We found that cyanotoxins did not impact parasite fitness (infection prevalence and spore yield per infected host) or virulence (host lifetime reproduction and survivorship) at the tested concentrations (10 and 30 μg/L). However, we found that spending longer as a transmission spore decreased a spore's chances for successful infection: spores that were only incubated for 24 hr infected approximately 75% of exposed hosts, whereas spores incubated for 10 days infected less than 50% of exposed hosts.

   We also found a negative relationship between the final spore yield from infected hosts and the proportion of hosts that became infected. In treatments where spores spent longer in the water column prior to encountering a host, infection prevalence was lower (indicating lower per spore infectivity), but each infected host yielded more spores at the end of infection. We hypothesise that this pattern may result from intraspecific parasite competition within the host.

   Overall, these results suggest that transmission spores of this parasite are not strongly influenced by cyanotoxins in the water column, but that other aspects of spending time in the water strongly influence parasite fitness.

    

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4. Feline immunodeficiency virus in puma: Estimation of force of infection reveals insights into transmission

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5584  

   Reynolds, Jennifer J. H. ; Carver, Scott ; Cunningham, Mark W. ; Logan, Ken A. ; Vickers, Winston ; Crooks, Kevin R. ; VandeWoude, Sue ; Craft, Meggan E. ( September 2019 , Ecology and Evolution)

   Determining parameters that govern pathogen transmission (such as the force of infection, FOI), and pathogen impacts on morbidity and mortality, is exceptionally challenging for wildlife. Vital parameters can vary, for example across host populations, between sexes and within an individual's lifetime.

   Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a lentivirus affecting domestic and wild cat species, forming species‐specific viral–host associations. FIV infection is common in populations of puma (Puma concolor), yet uncertainty remains over transmission parameters and the significance of FIV infection for puma mortality. In this study, the age‐specific FOI of FIV in pumas was estimated from prevalence data, and the evidence for disease‐associated mortality was assessed.

   We fitted candidate models to FIV prevalence data and adopted a maximum likelihood method to estimate parameter values in each model. The models with the best fit were determined to infer the most likely FOI curves. We applied this strategy for female and male pumas from California, Colorado, and Florida.

   When splitting the data by sex and area, our FOI modeling revealed no evidence of disease‐associated mortality in any population. Both sex and location were found to influence the FOI, which was generally higher for male pumas than for females. For female pumas at all sites, and male pumas from California and Colorado, the FOI did not vary with puma age, implying FIV transmission can happen throughout life; this result supports the idea that transmission can occur from mothers to cubs and also throughout adult life. For Florida males, the FOI was a decreasing function of puma age, indicating an increased risk of infection in the early years, and a decreased risk at older ages.

   This research provides critical insight into pathogen transmission and impact in a secretive and solitary carnivore. Our findings shed light on the debate on whether FIV causes mortality in wild felids like puma, and our approach may be adopted for other diseases and species. The methodology we present can be used for identifying likely transmission routes of a pathogen and also estimating any disease‐associated mortality, both of which can be difficult to establish for wildlife diseases in particular.

    

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5. A mathematical model for the control of swimmer's itch

   https://doi.org/10.1111/nrm.12275  

   Peirce, J. P. ; Pellett, J. J. ; Sandland, G. J. ( June 2020 , Natural Resource Modeling)

   Swimmer's itch is an emerging disease caused by flatworm parasites that often use water birds as definitive hosts. When parasite larvae penetrate human skin they initiate localized inflammation that leads to intense itching. Concerns about this issue have been growing recently due to an apparent increase in the global occurrence of swimmer's itch and its subsequent impacts on recreational activities and associated revenues. Past study has identified the common merganser as a key definitive host for these worms in the United States; a number of snail species serve as intermediate hosts. Although previous attempts at controlling swimmer's itch have targeted snails, a handful of efforts have concentrated on treating water birds with the anthelmintic drug, praziquantel. We construct a mathematical model of swimmer's itch and its treatment within the infected merganser population. Our goal is to identify merganser treatment regimes that minimize the number of infected snails thereby reducing the risk of human infections. Optimal control of bird hosts is defined analytically and we include numerical simulations assuming different resource‐allocation strategies. Results from the study may help identify treatment protocols that lower merganser infection rates and ultimately reduce the occurrence of swimmer's itch in freshwater systems throughout the Midwest.

   Recommendations for Resource Managers

   Regardless of the time and monetary resources available, praziquantel treatment frequency should increase as mergansers arrive on the lake with continued treatments (albeit at reduced levels) until the end of the residency period.

   Allocating plenty of resources towards the treatment of mergansers predicted a sharp drop in infected birds, which then remained close to zero throughout the remainder of the residency period. This approach reduced schistosome infection in mergansers and kept snail infections within the idealized range during times of peak recreational activity. Consequently, human cases of swimmer's itch would be expected to be low to nonexistent. Furthermore, our treatment‐longevity computation suggested that subsequent praziquantel dosing would not be required for a number of years.

   Under more limited resources, the number of birds treated per day was much smaller throughout the residency period; however, even under these circumstances (which equated to treating approximately one bird every 5 days), simulated infected merganser densities were reduced to the point where snail infections remained below epidemic levels through to the end of the recreational period. Treatment longevity was shorter compared with the high‐resource option, but still extended 122 days into Season 2 (posttreatment).

   We also used our model to investigate situations where lake managers and/or federal agencies might be taxed in terms of the time available to continuously treat mergansers on a given lake. An individual scientist may only have a single day (or two) to dose birds, rather than continuously administering praziquantel throughout the birds' residency period. If <77% of the total number of arriving birds can be treated in a single day, we recommend praziquantel administrations when the number of mergansers reaches the maximum that can be successfully treated. In addition, model simulations demonstrate that if managers are able to treat a large number of birds, they should wait until the end of the migration period.

    

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