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Host mortality and variability in epizootics of Schistocephalus solidus infecting the threespine stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2010

D. C. HEINS ,
E. L. BIRDEN  and
J. A. BAKER
D. C. HEINS*
Affiliation:
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 400 Lindy Boggs Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA
E. L. BIRDEN
Affiliation:
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 400 Lindy Boggs Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA
J. A. BAKER
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts 01610, USA
*
*Corresponding author: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 400 Lindy Boggs Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA. Tel: +1 504 865 5563. Fax: +1 504 862 8706. E-mail: heins@tulane.edu
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Summary

An analysis of the metrics of Schistocephalus solidus infection of the threespine stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, in Walby Lake, Alaska, showed that an epizootic ended between 1996 and 1998 and another occurred between 1998 and 2003. The end of the first epizootic was associated with a crash in population size of the stickleback, which serves as the second intermediate host. The likely cause of the end of that epizootic is mass mortality of host fish over winter in 1996–1997. The deleterious impact of the parasite on host reproduction and increased host predation associated with parasitic manipulation of host behaviour and morphology to facilitate transmission might also have played a role, along with unknown environmental factors acting on heavily infected fish or fish in poor condition. The second epizootic was linked to relatively high levels of prevalence and mean intensity of infection, but parasite:host mass ratios were quite low at the peak and there were no apparent mass deaths of the host. A number of abiotic and biotic factors are likely to interact to contribute to the occurrence of epizootics in S. solidus, which appear to be unstable and variable. Epizootics appear to depend on particular and, at times, rare sets of circumstances.

Keywords

epizooticGasterosteus aculeatusintensityparasite indexpopulation dynamicsprevalencethreespine sticklebackSchistocephalus solidus
Type
Research Article
Information
Parasitology , Volume 137 , Issue 11 , September 2010 , pp. 1681 - 1686
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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