May 18, 2022

12:00pm, PST 158 HH and Zoom

Hillary Young
Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara

" Effects of Wildlife Loss and Livestock Replacememt on Disease Transmission in a Changing World "

Faunal communities are changing rapidly – with dramatic declines in wildlife more than compensated, by biomass, by enormous increases in domestic stock.  While we often think of this transformation of animal life on our planet as merely an unfortunate consequence of other forms of global change, this faunal turnover is in fact a driver of global change in its own right, with cascading effects across ecosystem function. Here, we explore the effects of this current pulse of faunal turnover on the prevalence and exposure risk for a suite of parasites and pathogens in both Californian and African ecosystems.  We identify strong effects of changing faunal communities on parasite transmission that vary in predictable ways across climatic contexts – due both to composition and behavioural changes of the host species.  These findings have important implications for understanding and predicting wildlife and zoonotic disease dynamics in changing Anthropocene climates

 

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

12:00pm, PST

Hershey Hall, Room 158

Host: EEB Graduate Students