2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH
6/05/2017 | 9:15 AM - 9:30 AM | Host Diet Stoichiometry Influences Transmission Dynamics in Whirling Disease | 306B
Host Diet Stoichiometry Influences Transmission Dynamics in Whirling Disease
For many parasites their host is both their habitat and their source of nutrients. Further, because hosts have finite lifespans, and some parasites require multiple hosts to complete their lifecycle, the ability to migrate from one host to the next is critical for parasite lineages to persist. Whirling disease in salmonids is caused by the Myxozoan parasite Myxobolus cerebralis. M. cerebralis requires both the oligochaete worm Tubifex tubifex and a salmonid fish in order to complete its life cycle. I infected T. tubifex worms and reared them on 5 diets ranging in C:P from 1464 to 35 and recorded the number of infectious spores of M. cerebralis produced by individual worms over the course of 112 days. Preliminary results suggest that spore production was negatively correlated with diet C:P, duration of spore release was negatively correlated with diet C:P, and mortality was positively correlated with diet C:P. Together these results suggest that worms feeding on nutrient rich diets are themselves higher quality diet resources for the parasite, and that eutrophication may result in greater transmission pressure in wildlife diseases of interest.
- C11 Community Ecology
- C03 Invertebrates
- S19 Elements and energy as fundamental currencies of nature: using ecological stoichiometry as a tool to advance the sustainability of freshwater ecosystems
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Presenters/Authors
Andrew Sanders
(), North Carolina State University Dept. of Applied Ecology; Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, ajsande5@ncsu.edu;
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Brad Taylor
(), North Carolina State University Dept. of Applied Ecology; Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, bwtaylo3@ncsu.edu ;
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