Life Sciences Commons^™

Relationships Between Microbial Indicators And Pathogens In Recreational Water Settings, Asja Korajkic, Brian R. Mcminn, Valerie J. Harwood

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Fecal pollution of recreational waters can cause scenic blight and pose a threat to public health, resulting in beach advisories and closures. Fecal indicator bacteria (total and fecal coliforms, Escherichia coli, and enterococci), and alternative indicators of fecal pollution (Clostridium perfringens and bacteriophages) are routinely used in the assessment of sanitary quality of recreational waters. However, fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), and alternative indicators are found in the gastrointestinal tract of humans, and many other animals and therefore are considered general indicators of fecal pollution. As such, there is room for improvement in terms of their use for informing risk assessment …

Estimating The Elimination Feasibility In The 'End Game' Of Control Efforts For Parasites Subjected To Regular Mass Drug Administration: Methods And Their Application To Schistosomiasis, Arathi Arakala, Christopher M. Hoover, John M. Marshall, Susanne H. Sokolow, Guilio A. De Leo, Jason R. Rohr, Justin V. Remais, Manoj Gambhir

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Progress towards controlling and eliminating parasitic worms, including schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis, and lymphatic filariasis, is advancing rapidly as national governments, multinational NGOs, and pharmaceutical companies launch collaborative chemotherapeutic control campaigns. Critical questions remain regarding the potential for achieving elimination of these infections, and analytical methods can help to quickly estimate progress towards—and the probability of achieving—elimination over specific timeframes. Here, we propose the effective reproduction number, R_eff, as a proxy of elimination potential for sexually reproducing worms that are subject to poor mating success at very low abundance (positive density dependence, or Allee effects). R_eff is the …

Salty Fertile Lakes: How Salinization And Eutrophication Alter The Structure Of Freshwater Communities, Lovisa Lind, Matthew S. Schuler, William D. Hintz, Aaron B. Stoler, Devin K. Jones, Brian M. Mattes, Rick A. Relyea

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

The quality of freshwater ecosystems is decreasing worldwide because of anthropogenic activities. For example, nutrient over‐enrichment associated with agricultural, urban, and industrial development has led to an acceleration of primary production, or eutrophication. Additionally, in northern areas, deicing salts that are an evolutionary novel stressor to freshwater ecosystems have caused chloride levels of many freshwaters to exceed thresholds established for environmental protection. Even if excess nutrients and road deicing salts often contaminate freshwaters at the same time, the combined effects of eutrophication and salinization on freshwater communities are unknown. Thus by using outdoor mesocosms, we investigated the potentially interactive effects …

Evolutionary History Of Plant Hosts And Fungal Symbionts Predicts The Strength Of Mycorrhizal Mutualism, Jason D. Hoeksema, James D. Bever, Sounak Chakraborty, V. Bala Chaudhary, Monique Gardes, Catherine A. Gehring, Miranda M. Hart, Elizabeth A. Housworth, Wittaya Kaonongbua, Marc J. Lajeunesse

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Most plants engage in symbioses with mycorrhizal fungi in soils and net consequences for plants vary widely from mutualism to parasitism. However, we lack a synthetic understanding of the evolutionary and ecological forces driving such variation for this or any other nutritional symbiosis. We used meta-analysis across 646 combinations of plants and fungi to show that evolutionary history explains substantially more variation in plant responses to mycorrhizal fungi than the ecological factors included in this study, such as nutrient fertilization and additional microbes. Evolutionary history also has a different influence on outcomes of ectomycorrhizal versus arbuscular mycorrhizal symbioses; the former …

The Influence Of Landscape And Environmental Factors On Ranavirus Epidemiology In A California Amphibian Assemblage, Brian J. Tornabene, Andrew R. Blausten, Cheryl J. Briggs, Dana M. Calhoun, Pieter T. J. Johnson, Travis Mcdevitt-Galles, Jason R. Rohr, Jason T. Hoverman

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

1. A fundamental goal of disease ecology is to determine the landscape and environmental processes that drive disease dynamics at different biological levels to guide management and conservation. Although ranaviruses (family Iridoviridae) are emerging amphibian pathogens, few studies have conducted comprehensive field surveys to assess potential drivers of ranavirus disease dynamics.
2. We examined the factors underlying patterns in site‐level ranavirus presence and individual‐level ranavirus infection in 76 ponds and 1,088 individuals representing five amphibian species within the East Bay region of California.
3. Based on a competing‐model approach followed by variance partitioning, landscape and biotic variables explained the most variation in …

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 …

Do Host‐Associated Gut Microbiota Mediate The Effect Of An Herbicide On Disease Risk In Frogs?, Sarah A. Knutie, Caitlin R. Gabor, Kevin D. Kohl, Jason R. Rohr

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

1. Environmental stressors, such as pollutants, can increase disease risk in wildlife. For example, the herbicide atrazine affects host defences (e.g. resistance and tolerance) of the amphibian chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), but the mechanisms for these associations are not entirely clear. Given that pollutants can alter the gut microbiota of hosts, which in turn can affect their health and immune systems, one potential mechanism by which pollutants could increase infection risk is by influencing host‐associated microbiota.
2. Here, we test whether early‐life exposure to the estimated environmental concentration (EEC; 200 μg/L) of atrazine affects the gut bacterial composition of …

Agrochemicals Increase Risk Of Human Schistosomiasis By Supporting Higher Densities Of Intermediate Hosts, Neal T. Halstead, Christopher M. Hoover, Arathi Arakala, David J. Civitello, Guilio A. De Leo, Manoj Gambhir, Steve A. Johnson, Nicolas Jouanard, Kristin A. Loerns, Karena Nguyen, Jason R. Rohr

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Schistosomiasis is a snail-borne parasitic disease that ranks among the most important water-based diseases of humans in developing countries. Increased prevalence and spread of human schistosomiasis to non-endemic areas has been consistently linked with water resource management related to agricultural expansion. However, the role of agrochemical pollution in human schistosome transmission remains unexplored, despite strong evidence of agrochemicals increasing snail-borne diseases of wildlife and a projected 2- to 5-fold increase in global agrochemical use by 2050. Using a field mesocosm experiment, we show that environmentally relevant concentrations of fertilizer, a herbicide, and an insecticide, individually and as mixtures, increase densities …

The Ecology And Economics Of Restoration: When, What, Where, And How To Restore Ecosystems, Jason R. Rohr, Emily S. Bernhardt, Marc W. Cadotte, William H. Clements

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Restoration ecology has provided a suite of tools for accelerating the recovery of ecosystems damaged by drivers of global change. We review both the ecological and economic concepts developed in restoration ecology, and offer guidance on when, what, where, and how to restore ecosystems. For when to restore, we highlight the value of pursuing restoration early to prevent ecosystems from crossing tipping points and evaluating whether unassisted natural recovery is more cost-effective than active restoration. For what to restore, we encourage developing a restoration plan with stakeholders that will restore structural, compositional, and functional endpoints, and whose goal is a …

Resilience In Moving Water: Effects Of Turbulence On The Predatory Impact Of The Lobate Ctenophore Mnemiopsis Leidyi, Cornelia Jaspers, John H. Costello, Kelly R. Sutherland, Brad J. Gemmell, Kelsey N. Lucas, Jennifer Tackett, Kara Dodge, Sean P. Colin

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Despite its delicate morphology, the lobate ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi thrives in coastal ecosystems as an influential zooplankton predator. Coastal ecosystems are often characterized as energetic systems with high levels of natural turbulence in the water column. To understand how natural wind‐driven turbulence affects the feeding ecology of M. leidyi, we used a combination of approaches to quantify how naturally and laboratory generated turbulence affects the behavior, feeding processes and feeding impact of M. leidyi. Experiments using laboratory generated turbulence demonstrated that turbulence can reduce M. leidyi feeding rates on copepods and Artemia nauplii by > 50%. However, detailed feeding …

A Faculty Professional Development Model That Improves Student Learning, Encourages Active-Learning Instructional Practices, And Works For Faculty At Multiple Institutions, Karen N. Pelletrau, Jennifer K. Knight, Paula P. Lemons, Jill S. Mccourt, John E, Merrill, Ross H. Nehm, Luanna B Prevost, Mark Urban-Lurain, Michelle K. Smith

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Helping faculty develop high-quality instruction that positively affects student learning can be complicated by time limitations, a lack of resources, and inexperience using student data to make iterative improvements. We describe a community of 16 faculty from five institutions who overcame these challenges and collaboratively designed, taught, iteratively revised, and published an instructional unit about the potential effect of mutations on DNA replication, transcription, and translation. The unit was taught to more than 2000 students in 18 courses, and student performance improved from preassessment to postassessment in every classroom. This increase occurred even though faculty varied in their instructional practices …

Author Correction: Evolutionary History Of Plant Hosts And Fungal Symbionts Predicts The Strength Of Mycorrhizal Mutualism, Jason D. Hoeksema, James D. Bever, Sounak Chakraborty, V. Bala Chaudhary, Monique Gardes, Catherine A. Gehring, Miranda M. Hart, Elizabeth A. Housworth, Wittaya Kaonongbua, Marc J. Lajeunesse

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

In the original published version of the article, the description of the fixed-effect predictor Inoculum Complexity presented in the Methods was incorrect. The incorrect description given was: “single fungal genus, multiple fungal genera, or whole soil inoculum”. The correct description is: “single fungal species, multiple fungal species, or whole soil inoculum”. The error does not affect any of the results presented in the paper. The correction has been made to the HTML and PDF versions of the paper.