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Svatos EC, Falke LP, Preston DL. Disturbance and disease: host-parasite interactions in freshwater streams remain stable following wildfire. Oecologia 2024; 204:401-411. [PMID: 37486411 DOI: 10.1007/s00442-023-05422-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/01/2023] [Accepted: 07/09/2023] [Indexed: 07/25/2023]
Abstract
Increases in the intensity and frequency of wildfires highlight the need to understand how fire disturbance affects ecological interactions. Though the effects of wildfire on free-living aquatic communities are relatively well-studied, how host-parasite interactions respond to fire disturbance is largely unexplored. Using a Before-After-Control-Impact design, we surveyed 10 stream sites (5 burned and 5 unburned) in the Willamette River Basin, Oregon and quantified snail host infection status and trematode parasite community structure 1 year before and two years after historic wildfires. Despite the severity of the wildfires, snail host populations did not show significant shifts in density or size distributions. We detected nine taxa of trematode parasites and overall probability of infection remained consistent over the three-year study period. However, at the taxon-specific level, we found evidence that infection probability by one trematode decreased and another increased after fire. In a larger dataset focusing on the first year after fire (9 burned, 8 unburned sites), we found evidence for subtle differences in trematode community structure, including higher Shannon diversity and evenness at the burned sites. Taken together, host-parasite interactions were remarkably stable for most taxa; for trematodes that did show responses, changes in abundance or behavior of definitive hosts may underlie observed patterns. These results have implications for using parasites as bioindicators of environmental change and suggest that aquatic snail-trematode interactions may be relatively resistant to wildfire disturbance in some ecosystems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emma C Svatos
- Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA.
- Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA.
| | - Landon P Falke
- Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA
- Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA
| | - Daniel L Preston
- Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA
- Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA
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Coelho L, Afonso M, Jesus F, Campos I, Abrantes N, Gonçalves FJM, Serpa D, Marques SM. Effects of Eucalypt ashes from moderate and high severity wildfires on the skin microbiome of the Iberian frog (Rana iberica). ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION (BARKING, ESSEX : 1987) 2022; 313:120065. [PMID: 36055453 DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2022.120065] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/06/2022] [Revised: 08/10/2022] [Accepted: 08/25/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
Forest fires can threaten amphibians because ash-associated contaminants transported by post-fire runoff impact both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Still, the effects of these contaminants on the skin microbiome of amphibians have been overlooked. Thus, the main objective of this study was to assess the effects of ash from different severity wildfires (moderate and high) on the skin microbiome of the Iberian frog (Rana iberica). Bacterial isolates sampled from R. iberica skin microbiome were tested for their antimicrobial activity against the pathogen Aeromonas salmonicida. The isolates with antimicrobial activity were identified and further exposed to several concentrations (0, 6.25, 12.5, 25, 50, 75, and 100%) of Eucalypt (Eucalyptus globulus) aqueous extracts (AAEs) of ash from both a moderate and a high severity wildfire. The results showed that 53% of the bacterial isolates presented antimicrobial activity, with Pseudomonas being the most common genus. Exposure to AAEs had diverse effects on bacterial growth since a decrease, an increase or no effects on growth were observed. For both ash types, increasing AAEs concentrations led to an increase in the number of bacteria whose growth was negatively affected. Ash from the high severity fire showed more adverse effects on bacterial growth than those from moderate severity, likely due to the higher metal concentrations of the former. This study revealed that bacteria living in Iberian frogs' skin could be impaired by ash-related contaminants, potentially weakening the individual's immune system. Given the foreseen increase in wildfires' frequency and severity under climate change, this work raises awareness of the risks faced by amphibian communities in fire-prone regions, emphasising the importance of a rapid implementation of post-fire emergency measures for the preservation and conservation of this group of animals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Coelho
- Department of Biology, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal.
| | - Mariana Afonso
- Department of Biology, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
| | - Fátima Jesus
- CESAM - Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, Department of Environment and Planning, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
| | - Isabel Campos
- CESAM - Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, Department of Environment and Planning, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
| | - Nelson Abrantes
- CESAM - Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, Department of Environment and Planning, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
| | - Fernando J M Gonçalves
- CESAM - Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, Department of Biology, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
| | - Dalila Serpa
- CESAM - Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, Department of Environment and Planning, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
| | - Sérgio M Marques
- CESAM - Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, Department of Biology, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
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Driscoll DA, Armenteras D, Bennett AF, Brotons L, Clarke MF, Doherty TS, Haslem A, Kelly LT, Sato CF, Sitters H, Aquilué N, Bell K, Chadid M, Duane A, Meza-Elizalde MC, Giljohann KM, González TM, Jambhekar R, Lazzari J, Morán-Ordóñez A, Wevill T. How fire interacts with habitat loss and fragmentation. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2021; 96:976-998. [PMID: 33561321 DOI: 10.1111/brv.12687] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2020] [Revised: 01/14/2021] [Accepted: 01/15/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023]
Abstract
Biodiversity faces many threats and these can interact to produce outcomes that may not be predicted by considering their effects in isolation. Habitat loss and fragmentation (hereafter 'fragmentation') and altered fire regimes are important threats to biodiversity, but their interactions have not been systematically evaluated across the globe. In this comprehensive synthesis, including 162 papers which provided 274 cases, we offer a framework for understanding how fire interacts with fragmentation. Fire and fragmentation interact in three main ways: (i) fire influences fragmentation (59% of 274 cases), where fire either destroys and fragments habitat or creates and connects habitat; (ii) fragmentation influences fire (25% of cases) where, after habitat is reduced in area and fragmented, fire in the landscape is subsequently altered because people suppress or ignite fires, or there is increased edge flammability or increased obstruction to fire spread; and (iii) where the two do not influence each other, but fire interacts with fragmentation to affect responses like species richness, abundance and extinction risk (16% of cases). Where fire and fragmentation do influence each other, feedback loops are possible that can lead to ecosystem conversion (e.g. forest to grassland). This is a well-documented threat in the tropics but with potential also to be important elsewhere. Fire interacts with fragmentation through scale-specific mechanisms: fire creates edges and drives edge effects; fire alters patch quality; and fire alters landscape-scale connectivity. We found only 12 cases in which studies reported the four essential strata for testing a full interaction, which were fragmented and unfragmented landscapes that both span contrasting fire histories, such as recently burnt and long unburnt vegetation. Simulation and empirical studies show that fire and fragmentation can interact synergistically, multiplicatively, antagonistically or additively. These cases highlight a key reason why understanding interactions is so important: when fire and fragmentation act together they can cause local extinctions, even when their separate effects are neutral. Whether fire-fragmentation interactions benefit or disadvantage species is often determined by the species' preferred successional stage. Adding fire to landscapes generally benefits early-successional plant and animal species, whereas it is detrimental to late-successional species. However, when fire interacts with fragmentation, the direction of effect of fire on a species could be reversed from the effect expected by successional preferences. Adding fire to fragmented landscapes can be detrimental for species that would normally co-exist with fire, because species may no longer be able to disperse to their preferred successional stage. Further, animals may be attracted to particular successional stages leading to unexpected responses to fragmentation, such as higher abundance in more isolated unburnt patches. Growing human populations and increasing resource consumption suggest that fragmentation trends will worsen over coming years. Combined with increasing alteration of fire regimes due to climate change and human-caused ignitions, interactions of fire with fragmentation are likely to become more common. Our new framework paves the way for developing a better understanding of how fire interacts with fragmentation, and for conserving biodiversity in the face of these emerging challenges.
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Affiliation(s)
- Don A Driscoll
- Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC, 3125, Australia
| | - Dolors Armenteras
- Laboratorio de Ecología del Paisaje y Modelación de Ecosistemas ECOLMOD, Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Bogotá, Edificio 421, Oficina 223, Cra. 30 # 45-03, Bogotá, 111321, Colombia
| | - Andrew F Bennett
- Research Centre for Future Landscapes, Department Ecology, Environment & Evolution, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, 3086, Australia
| | - Lluís Brotons
- InForest JRU (CTFC-CREAF), Carretera vella de Sant Llorenç de Morunys km. 2, Solsona, 25280, Spain.,CREAF, Bellaterra, Barcelona, 08193, Spain.,CSIC, Bellaterra, Barcelona, 08193, Spain
| | - Michael F Clarke
- Research Centre for Future Landscapes, Department Ecology, Environment & Evolution, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, 3086, Australia
| | - Tim S Doherty
- Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC, 3125, Australia
| | - Angie Haslem
- Research Centre for Future Landscapes, Department Ecology, Environment & Evolution, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, 3086, Australia
| | - Luke T Kelly
- School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia
| | - Chloe F Sato
- Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC, 3125, Australia
| | - Holly Sitters
- School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, University of Melbourne, 4 Water Street, Creswick, VIC, 3363, Australia
| | - Núria Aquilué
- InForest JRU (CTFC-CREAF), Carretera vella de Sant Llorenç de Morunys km. 2, Solsona, 25280, Spain
| | - Kristian Bell
- Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC, 3125, Australia
| | - Maria Chadid
- Laboratorio de Ecología del Paisaje y Modelación de Ecosistemas ECOLMOD, Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Bogotá, Edificio 421, Oficina 223, Cra. 30 # 45-03, Bogotá, 111321, Colombia
| | - Andrea Duane
- InForest JRU (CTFC-CREAF), Carretera vella de Sant Llorenç de Morunys km. 2, Solsona, 25280, Spain
| | - María C Meza-Elizalde
- Laboratorio de Ecología del Paisaje y Modelación de Ecosistemas ECOLMOD, Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Bogotá, Edificio 421, Oficina 223, Cra. 30 # 45-03, Bogotá, 111321, Colombia
| | | | - Tania Marisol González
- Laboratorio de Ecología del Paisaje y Modelación de Ecosistemas ECOLMOD, Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Bogotá, Edificio 421, Oficina 223, Cra. 30 # 45-03, Bogotá, 111321, Colombia
| | - Ravi Jambhekar
- Azim Premji University, PES Campus, Pixel Park, B Block, Hosur Road, beside NICE Road, Electronic City, Bengaluru, Karnataka, 560100, India
| | - Juliana Lazzari
- Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Building 141, Linnaeus Way, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia
| | - Alejandra Morán-Ordóñez
- InForest JRU (CTFC-CREAF), Carretera vella de Sant Llorenç de Morunys km. 2, Solsona, 25280, Spain
| | - Tricia Wevill
- Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC, 3125, Australia
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Thom D, Seidl R. Natural disturbance impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity in temperate and boreal forests. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2016; 91:760-81. [PMID: 26010526 PMCID: PMC4898621 DOI: 10.1111/brv.12193] [Citation(s) in RCA: 164] [Impact Index Per Article: 20.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/19/2014] [Revised: 04/01/2015] [Accepted: 04/22/2015] [Indexed: 12/03/2022]
Abstract
In many parts of the world forest disturbance regimes have intensified recently, and future climatic changes are expected to amplify this development further in the coming decades. These changes are increasingly challenging the main objectives of forest ecosystem management, which are to provide ecosystem services sustainably to society and maintain the biological diversity of forests. Yet a comprehensive understanding of how disturbances affect these primary goals of ecosystem management is still lacking. We conducted a global literature review on the impact of three of the most important disturbance agents (fire, wind, and bark beetles) on 13 different ecosystem services and three indicators of biodiversity in forests of the boreal, cool- and warm-temperate biomes. Our objectives were to (i) synthesize the effect of natural disturbances on a wide range of possible objectives of forest management, and (ii) investigate standardized effect sizes of disturbance for selected indicators via a quantitative meta-analysis. We screened a total of 1958 disturbance studies published between 1981 and 2013, and reviewed 478 in detail. We first investigated the overall effect of disturbances on individual ecosystem services and indicators of biodiversity by means of independence tests, and subsequently examined the effect size of disturbances on indicators of carbon storage and biodiversity by means of regression analysis. Additionally, we investigated the effect of commonly used approaches of disturbance management, i.e. salvage logging and prescribed burning. We found that disturbance impacts on ecosystem services are generally negative, an effect that was supported for all categories of ecosystem services, i.e. supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services (P < 0.001). Indicators of biodiversity, i.e. species richness, habitat quality and diversity indices, on the other hand were found to be influenced positively by disturbance (P < 0.001). Our analyses thus reveal a 'disturbance paradox', documenting that disturbances can put ecosystem services at risk while simultaneously facilitating biodiversity. A detailed investigation of disturbance effect sizes on carbon storage and biodiversity further underlined these divergent effects of disturbance. While a disturbance event on average causes a decrease in total ecosystem carbon by 38.5% (standardized coefficient for stand-replacing disturbance), it on average increases overall species richness by 35.6%. Disturbance-management approaches such as salvage logging and prescribed burning were neither found significantly to mitigate negative effects on ecosystem services nor to enhance positive effects on biodiversity, and thus were not found to alleviate the disturbance paradox. Considering that climate change is expected to intensify natural disturbance regimes, our results indicate that biodiversity will generally benefit from such changes while a sustainable provisioning of ecosystem services might come increasingly under pressure. This underlines that disturbance risk and resilience require increased attention in ecosystem management in the future, and that new approaches to addressing the disturbance paradox in management are needed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dominik Thom
- Institute of Silviculture, Department of Forest- and Soil Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) Vienna, Peter-Jordan-Straße 82, 1190, Vienna, Austria
| | - Rupert Seidl
- Institute of Silviculture, Department of Forest- and Soil Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) Vienna, Peter-Jordan-Straße 82, 1190, Vienna, Austria
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Scasta JD. Fire and Parasites: An Under-Recognized Form of Anthropogenic Land Use Change and Mechanism of Disease Exposure. ECOHEALTH 2015; 12:398-403. [PMID: 25805161 DOI: 10.1007/s10393-015-1024-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/12/2014] [Revised: 12/15/2014] [Accepted: 02/06/2015] [Indexed: 06/04/2023]
Abstract
Anthropogenic land use changes have altered ecosystems and exacerbated the spread of infectious diseases. Recent reviews, however, have revealed that fire suppression in fire-prone natural areas has not been recognized as a form of anthropogenic land use change. Furthermore, fire suppression has been an under-recognized mechanism altering the risk and transmission of infectious disease pathogens and host-parasite dynamics. However, as settlement patterns changed, especially due to colonial expansion in North America, Africa, and Australia, fire suppression became a major form of land use change which has led to broad-scale ecosystem changes. Because parasites of humans and animals can vector viral, bacterial, prion, fungal, or protozoan pathogens, concomitant changes associated with anthropogenic-induced changes to fire frequencies and intensities are of concern. I provide reference to 24 studies that indicate that restoring fire in natural areas has the potential to reduce ectoparasites without wings such as ticks, chiggers, fleas, and lice; ectoparasites with wings such as mosquitos, horn flies, face flies, and stable flies; and endoparasites affecting livestock and wildlife. This suggests that fire ecology and parasitology be considered as a priority area for future research that has implications for both humans and animals.
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Affiliation(s)
- John Derek Scasta
- Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Wyoming, Agriculture C 2004, Department 3354, 1000 E University Avenue, Laramie, WY, 82071, USA.
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