Emerging Infectious Diseases in Amphibians: from Individuals to Community Effects

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Understanding Emerging Infectious diseases (EIDs) ecology and evolution is a key to the more general investigations of extinction. While determining the cause of extinction is always challenging and candidate species are few, amphibian appear to be an ideal model as increasing evidence suggests that we are facing a global population decline with nearly 10% of the populations of all amphibian species close to extinction and a further 32% being classified as threatened. Among many causes, Emergent Infectious Diseases (EIDs) such as Ranavirus have been identified to be responsible for massive die-offs. In the context of the general debate over global amphibian population decline, the objective of my ongoing research program is to investigate the ecology and evolution of such disease and to understand how it can lead to pathogen-induced extinctions. Additionally, I consider this study system to be ideal to investigate questions with regards to the links between ecological and evolutionary processes and the understanding of mechanisms that modulate host-parasite coevolutionary outcomes at different level of organization. Using a combination of field and lab-based observations and experiments and considering the current knowledge on host-parasite evolutionary ecology, I have the following objectives:1-How does environmental heterogeneity modulate Lithobates pipiens-Ranavirus interactions, and how this may affect frog population dynamics?2-How parasite transmission is linked to virulence in this system and how this may influence host-parasite interactions?3-How amphibian community variables (diversity, abundance...) are influenced by parasite mediated interactions and vice-versa?The results from this research program will be used to develop the theoretical and empirical framework for evolutionary ecology as well as provide epidemiological tools for the conservation of amphibian populations.