A direct test of the impact of infection on animal migration: consequences for parasite and host populations

感染对动物迁徙影响的直接测试：对寄生虫和宿主种群的影响

• 批准号: NE/V001809/1
• 负责人: Sarah Burthe
• 金额: $ 17.52万
• 依托单位: UK CENTRE FOR ECOLOGY & HYDROLOGY
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FV001809%2F1
• 关键词: direct; test; impact; infection; animal

Wildlife populations experience a wide range of infections that can both impact on their own health and cross species boundaries to pose environmental risks to farm animal and human health. The impact of this infection will be inextricably linked to a species' movement ecology, as the way in which animal movements around their environment is a major factor in determining how infections are transmitted and persist. Predicting infection dynamics and mitigating their impacts therefore requires understanding how infection influences animal movements and, in turn, understanding the consequences of animal movement for infection dynamics. We will therefore address three key questions in this project: 1) Does infection status influence individual migration strategy? 2) Does infection affect the survival and breeding success of migrants and residents to different extents? 3) Do differences in migratory behaviour scale up to affect levels of infection in host populations.We will investigate these questions in a partially migratory population of seabirds that breed on the Isle of May National Nature Reserve in South East Scotland but migrate along the East Coats of the UK. Recent theoretical studies have modelled three disease related mechanisms that could directly affect selection for, or against, migration. These are 1) migratory escape, whereby migration allows individuals to escape from high-exposure habitats or infected individuals. 2) migratory recovery, whereby infected individuals migrate to a different area to gain resources that facilitate recovery 3) migratory culling, whereby infected individuals suffer higher mortality during migration.We will firstly test whether natural levels of parasitism are associated with individual migration strategy expressed in an individual's first year of life and whether measures of immunity differ in juveniles that subsequently become resident or migrant. We will then experimentally test whether parasitism has a causal role through experimental reduction of parasite burden.We will then test whether parasitism is associated with differences in breeding success and survival of migrants and residents. We will use multi-year demographic data to link individual migration strategy to levels of parasitism and components of fitness to test a) whether parasitism is associated with any potential selective advantage of migration and b) the demographic routes through which this may operate.Finally we will test whether changes in population levels of parasitism between years is due to decreases in individual parasite burden as individuals recover from infection or the loss of infected hosts from the population as they fail to survive. This is important from a management or conservation point of view as these alternative explanations would lead to very different conclusions about the robustness of the population to infection.This study will therefore provide first combined test of how parasitism drives migratory movements in a partially migratory species with measuring the consequences for population level changes in parasite abundance and whether these result from high levels of host mortality. These are key to assessing the impact of migration on parasite persistence in the environment and the impact of parasitism on different components of animal populations.

野生动物种群经历了广泛的感染，既可能影响其自身的健康，也可能跨越物种界限，对农场动物和人类健康构成环境风险。这种感染的影响将与物种的运动生态学密不可分，因为动物在其环境中的运动方式是决定感染如何传播和持续的主要因素。因此，预测感染动态和减轻其影响需要了解感染如何影响动物运动，进而了解动物运动对感染动态的影响。因此，我们将在这个项目中解决三个关键问题：1）感染状况是否影响个人的迁移策略？2)感染是否会不同程度地影响移民和居民的生存和繁殖成功？3)迁移行为的差异是否会影响宿主种群的感染水平，我们将在苏格兰东南部的五月岛国家自然保护区繁殖的海鸟部分迁移种群中调查这些问题，但迁移沿着英国的东海岸。最近的理论研究模拟了三种疾病相关的机制，可能直接影响选择，或反对，迁移。这些是1）迁移逃逸，即迁移使个体逃离高暴露栖息地或感染个体。2)迁移性恢复，即受感染的个体迁移到不同的地区，以获得有利于恢复的资源3）迁移性淘汰，即受感染的个体在迁移过程中遭受更高的死亡率。我们将首先测试寄生虫的自然水平是否与个体在生命的第一年中表达的个体迁移策略相关，以及随后成为居民或移民的青少年的免疫措施是否不同。然后，我们将通过减少寄生虫负担的实验来检验寄生虫是否具有因果作用，然后我们将检验寄生虫是否与繁殖成功率和移民和居民生存率的差异有关。我们将使用多年的人口统计数据，将个人迁移策略与寄生水平和适应度的组成部分联系起来，以测试a）寄生是否与迁移的任何潜在选择优势相关，以及B）最后，我们将测试不同年份间寄生虫种群水平的变化是否是由于个体从感染中恢复时个体寄生虫负担的减少，受感染的宿主因无法存活而从种群中消失。从管理或保护的角度来看，这是很重要的，因为这些替代的解释会导致非常不同的结论，人口的鲁棒性infection.This研究将因此提供第一个组合测试寄生虫如何驱动迁移运动的部分迁移物种测量的后果，寄生虫丰度的人口水平的变化，以及这些结果是否来自高水平的主机死亡率。这些是评估迁移对环境中寄生虫持久性的影响以及寄生对动物种群不同组成部分的影响的关键。