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Creators/Authors contains: "Ezenwa, ed., Vanessa"

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  1. Abstract

    Large occurrence datasets provide a sizable resource for ecological analyses, but have substantial limitations. Phenological analyses in Fricet al. (2020) were misleading due to inadequate curation and improper statistics. Reanalysing 22 univoltine species with sufficient data for independent analysis, we found substantively different macroscale phenological patterns, including later onset at higher latitude for most species.

     
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  2. Abstract

    The frequency and magnitude of extreme climate events are increasing with global change, yet we lack predictions and empirical evidence for the ability of wild populations to persist and adapt in response to these events. Here, we used Fisher's Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection to evaluate the adaptive potential ofLasthenia fremontii, a herbaceous winter annual that is endemic to seasonally flooded wetlands in California, to alternative flooding regimes that occur during El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. The results indicate that populations may exhibit greater adaptive potential in response to dry years than wet years, and that the relative performance of populations will change across climate scenarios. More generally, our findings show that extreme climate events can substantially change the potential for populations to adapt to climate change by modulating the expression of standing genetic variation and mean fitness.

     
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  3. Abstract

    Pathogens are embedded in a complex network of microparasites that can collectively or individually alter disease dynamics and outcomes. Endemic pathogens that infect an individual in the first years of life, for example, can either facilitate or compete with subsequent pathogens thereby exacerbating or ameliorating morbidity and mortality. Pathogen associations are ubiquitous but poorly understood, particularly in wild populations. We report here on 10 years of serological and molecular data in African lions, leveraging comprehensive demographic and behavioural data to test if endemic pathogens shape subsequent infection by epidemic pathogens. We combine network and community ecology approaches to assess broad network structure and characterise associations between pathogens across spatial and temporal scales. We found significant non‐random structure in the lion‐pathogen co‐occurrence network and identified both positive and negative associations between endemic and epidemic pathogens. Our results provide novel insights on the complex associations underlying pathogen co‐occurrence networks.

     
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  4. Abstract

    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 fungusBatrachochytrium 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 toBdwas 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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