Life Sciences Commons^™

Using Multi‐Response Models To Investigate Pathogen Coinfections Across Scales: Insights From Emerging Diseases Of Amphibians, William E. Stutz, Andrew R. Blaustein, Cheryl J. Briggs, Jason T. Hoverman, Jason R. Rohr, Pieter T. J. Johnson

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

1. Associations among parasites affect many aspects of host–parasite dynamics, but a lack of analytical tools has limited investigations of parasite correlations in observational data that are often nested across spatial and biological scales.
2. Here we illustrate how hierarchical, multiresponse modelling can characterize parasite associations by allowing for hierarchical structuring, offering estimates of uncertainty and incorporating correlational model structures. After introducing the general approach, we apply this framework to investigate coinfections among four amphibian parasites (the trematodes Ribeiroia ondatrae and Echinostoma spp., the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and ranaviruses) and among >2,000 individual hosts, 90 study sites and five amphibian host …