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Cravens AE, Clifford KR, Knapp C, Travis WR. The dynamic feasibility of resisting (R), accepting (A), or directing (D) ecological change. CONSERVATION BIOLOGY : THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR CONSERVATION BIOLOGY 2024:e14331. [PMID: 39016709 DOI: 10.1111/cobi.14331] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/07/2023] [Revised: 05/09/2024] [Accepted: 05/13/2024] [Indexed: 07/18/2024]
Abstract
Ecological transformations are occurring as a result of climate change, challenging traditional approaches to land management decision-making. The resist-accept-direct (RAD) framework helps managers consider how to respond to this challenge. We examined how the feasibility of the choices to resist, accept, and direct shifts in complex and dynamic ways through time. We considered 4 distinct types of social feasibility: regulatory, financial, public, and organizational. Our commentary is grounded in literature review and the examples that exist but necessarily has speculative elements because empirical evidence on this newly emerging management strategy is scarce. We expect that resist strategies will become less feasible over time as managers encounter situations where resisting is ecologically, by regulation, financially, or publicly not feasible. Similarly, we expect that as regulatory frameworks increasingly permit their use, if costs decrease, and if the public accepts them, managers will increasingly view accept and direct strategies as more viable options than they do at present. Exploring multiple types of feasibility over time allows consideration of both social and ecological trajectories of change in tandem. Our theorizing suggested that deepening the time horizon of decision-making allows one to think carefully about when one should adopt different approaches and how to combine them over time.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amanda E Cravens
- Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Corvallis, Oregon, USA
| | - Katherine R Clifford
- Western Water Assessment, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
| | - Corrine Knapp
- Haub School of Environment & Natural Resources, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA
| | - William R Travis
- Department of Geography and North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
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Villena OC, McClure KM, Camp RJ, LaPointe DA, Atkinson CT, Sofaer HR, Berio Fortini L. Environmental and geographical factors influence the occurrence and abundance of the southern house mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, in Hawai'i. Sci Rep 2024; 14:604. [PMID: 38182650 PMCID: PMC10770078 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-49793-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/28/2023] [Accepted: 12/12/2023] [Indexed: 01/07/2024] Open
Abstract
Hawaiian honeycreepers, a group of endemic Hawaiian forest birds, are being threatened by avian malaria, a non-native disease that is driving honeycreepers populations to extinction. Avian malaria is caused by the parasite Plasmodium relictum, which is transmitted by the invasive mosquito Culex quinquefasciatus. Environmental and geographical factors play an important role in shaping mosquito-borne disease transmission dynamics through their influence on the distribution and abundance of mosquitoes. We assessed the effects of environmental (temperature, precipitation), geographic (site, elevation, distance to anthropogenic features), and trap type (CDC light trap, CDC gravid trap) factors on mosquito occurrence and abundance. Occurrence was analyzed using classification and regression tree models (CART) and generalized linear models (GLM); abundance (count data) was analyzed using generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs). Models predicted highest mosquito occurrence at mid-elevation sites and between July and November. Occurrence increased with temperature and precipitation up to 580 mm. For abundance, the best model was a zero-inflated negative-binomial model that indicated higher abundance of mosquitoes at mid-elevation sites and peak abundance between August and October. Estimation of occurrence and abundance as well as understanding the factors that influence them are key for mosquito control, which may reduce the risk of forest bird extinction.
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Affiliation(s)
- Oswaldo C Villena
- Hawai'i Cooperative Studies Unit, University of Hawai'i at Hilo, Hilo, HI, 96720, USA
- The Earth Commons Institute, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 20057, USA
| | - Katherine M McClure
- Hawai'i Cooperative Studies Unit, University of Hawai'i at Hilo, Hilo, HI, 96720, USA
- U.S. Geological Survey, Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center, Hawai'i National Park, HI, 96718, USA
| | - Richard J Camp
- U.S. Geological Survey, Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center, Hawai'i National Park, HI, 96718, USA
| | - Dennis A LaPointe
- U.S. Geological Survey, Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center, Hawai'i National Park, HI, 96718, USA
| | - Carter T Atkinson
- U.S. Geological Survey, Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center, Hawai'i National Park, HI, 96718, USA
| | - Helen R Sofaer
- U.S. Geological Survey, Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center, Hawai'i National Park, HI, 96718, USA
| | - Lucas Berio Fortini
- U.S. Geological Survey, Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center, Hawai'i National Park, HI, 96718, USA.
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Paxton KL, Cassin-Sackett L, Atkinson CT, Videvall E, Campana MG, Fleischer RC. Gene expression reveals immune response strategies of naïve Hawaiian honeycreepers experimentally infected with introduced avian malaria. J Hered 2023; 114:326-340. [PMID: 36869776 DOI: 10.1093/jhered/esad017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/22/2022] [Accepted: 03/01/2023] [Indexed: 03/05/2023] Open
Abstract
The unprecedented rise in the number of new and emerging infectious diseases in the last quarter century poses direct threats to human and wildlife health. The introduction to the Hawaiian archipelago of Plasmodium relictum and the mosquito vector that transmits the parasite has led to dramatic losses in endemic Hawaiian forest bird species. Understanding how mechanisms of disease immunity to avian malaria may evolve is critical as climate change facilitates increased disease transmission to high elevation habitats where malaria transmission has historically been low and the majority of the remaining extant Hawaiian forest bird species now reside. Here, we compare the transcriptomic profiles of highly susceptible Hawai'i 'amakihi (Chlorodrepanis virens) experimentally infected with P. relictum to those of uninfected control birds from a naïve high elevation population. We examined changes in gene expression profiles at different stages of infection to provide an in-depth characterization of the molecular pathways contributing to survival or mortality in these birds. We show that the timing and magnitude of the innate and adaptive immune response differed substantially between individuals that survived and those that succumbed to infection, and likely contributed to the observed variation in survival. These results lay the foundation for developing gene-based conservation strategies for Hawaiian honeycreepers by identifying candidate genes and cellular pathways involved in the pathogen response that correlate with a bird's ability to recover from malaria infection.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kristina L Paxton
- Center for Conservation Genomics, National Zoological Park and Conservation Biology Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20008, USA
- Hawai'i Cooperative Studies Unit, University of Hawai'i Hilo, PO Box 44, Hawai'i National Park, HI 96718, USA
| | - Loren Cassin-Sackett
- Center for Conservation Genomics, National Zoological Park and Conservation Biology Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20008, USA
- Department of Biology, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA 70503, USA
| | - Carter T Atkinson
- U.S. Geological Survey Pacific Island Ecosystems Research Center, PO Box 44, Hawai'i National Park, HI 96718, USA
| | - Elin Videvall
- Center for Conservation Genomics, National Zoological Park and Conservation Biology Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20008, USA
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA
| | - Michael G Campana
- Center for Conservation Genomics, National Zoological Park and Conservation Biology Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20008, USA
| | - Robert C Fleischer
- Center for Conservation Genomics, National Zoological Park and Conservation Biology Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20008, USA
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Robles-Fernández ÁL, Santiago-Alarcon D, Lira-Noriega A. Wildlife susceptibility to infectious diseases at global scales. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2022; 119:e2122851119. [PMID: 35994656 PMCID: PMC9436312 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2122851119] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/17/2021] [Accepted: 07/11/2022] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Disease transmission prediction across wildlife is crucial for risk assessment of emerging infectious diseases. Susceptibility of host species to pathogens is influenced by the geographic, environmental, and phylogenetic context of the specific system under study. We used machine learning to analyze how such variables influence pathogen incidence for multihost pathogen assemblages, including one of direct transmission (coronaviruses and bats) and two vector-borne systems (West Nile Virus [WNV] and birds, and malaria and birds). Here we show that this methodology is able to provide reliable global spatial susceptibility predictions for the studied host-pathogen systems, even when using a small amount of incidence information (i.e., [Formula: see text] of information in a database). We found that avian malaria was mostly affected by environmental factors and by an interaction between phylogeny and geography, and WNV susceptibility was mostly influenced by phylogeny and by the interaction between geographic and environmental distances, whereas coronavirus susceptibility was mostly affected by geography. This approach will help to direct surveillance and field efforts providing cost-effective decisions on where to invest limited resources.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ángel L. Robles-Fernández
- Facultad de Física, Universidad Veracruzana, 91000 Xalapa, México
- School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281
| | | | - Andrés Lira-Noriega
- Red de Estudios Moleculares Avanzados, Instituto de Ecología, A.C., 91073 Xalapa, México
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The Impact of Temperature on the Sporogonic Development of the Tropical Avian Malaria Parasite Plasmodium relictum (Genetic Lineage pGRW4) in Culex pipiens Form molestus Mosquitoes. Microorganisms 2021; 9:microorganisms9112240. [PMID: 34835365 PMCID: PMC8620208 DOI: 10.3390/microorganisms9112240] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/04/2021] [Revised: 10/12/2021] [Accepted: 10/25/2021] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
The avian malaria parasite Plasmodium relictum (genetic lineage pGRW4) is known to cause severe pathology in nonadapted vertebrate hosts. This parasite is prevalent in some bird species in Northern Europe, however the records obtained are only from adult long-distance migrant birds after their return from the wintering grounds. A recent experimental study showed that this parasite completes sporogonic development in the local European vector Culex pipiens at a controlled mean temperature of 19 °C. Thereby, temperature limits for the transmission of this parasite in Northern Europe remain unknown. In this study, we took a step further and tested the impact of different temperature conditions, including some extreme fluctuations between 23 °C down to 7 °C, on the sporogonic development of P. relictum (pGRW4) in the vector Culex pipiens form molestus. Mosquitoes were exposed to infection and kept under different air-temperature conditions: (i) constant warm temperature, (ii) natural outdoor temperatures and (iii) temporary exposure to low temperatures. Plasmodium relictum (pGRW4) completed sporogony in mosquitoes of all experimental groups, however different patterns of the sporogonic development depending on temperature conditions were observed. Based on these results, we conclude that the cool air temperature of Northern Europe in summer is not a limiting factor in successful development of the parasite. However, delayed sporogony caused by low summer temperatures may have a detrimental impact on the active transmission of this parasite in Northern Europe.
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