Fishing-driven change in marine parasite assemblages
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- How do anthropogenic environmental impacts affect the abundance, diversity, and species composition of parasite assemblages? Despite the overwhelming ubiquity of parasites -- which constitute at least 40% of species on the planet -- we have only a rudimentary understanding of how parasite abundance and diversity respond to environmental change driven by human activities. My dissertation investigates this question by focusing on marine model systems affected by fishing, one of the most intense and longest-standing impacts on the world's oceans. I assessed how fishing affects parasite abundance, diversity, and taxonomic composition by comparing parasite assemblages of fishes collected from fished and unfished areas. My research suggests that the impacts of fishing on parasites are complex but predictable with an understanding of parasite natural history. Fishing reduced parasite diversity at large spatial scales (i.e., across islands), but had no effect on diversity at smaller spatial scales (i.e., between protected and open-access areas and across a fishing gradient within one island, respectively), where shorter dispersal distances might buffer against local extirpation of rare species. Fishing had negative effects on the abundance of trophically transmitted parasites, particularly cestodes and nematodes, which use as definitive hosts the high trophic-level species most susceptible to fishing impacts. Directly transmitted parasites appeared to track their hosts' response to fishing, increasing in abundance when their host increased in response to fishing pressure. Taken together, the empirical work presented in this dissertation suggests that fishing will have negative effects on parasites, particularly parasites with complex life cycles and those that use exploited hosts. However, the data presented here also emphasize the potential for increases in the abundance of the parasites of hosts that experience compensatory increases due to fishing of their predators or competitors. These results clearly indicate that neither positive nor negative relationships dominate the response of parasite abundance to fishing. Instead -- as has often been documented among free-living species -- there appear to be "winners and losers" among parasites in a changing environment.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Wood, Chelsea L |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Biology. |
| Primary advisor | Micheli, Fiorenza |
| Thesis advisor | Micheli, Fiorenza |
| Thesis advisor | Dirzo, Rodolfo |
| Thesis advisor | Kuris, Armand |
| Thesis advisor | Lafferty, Kevin |
| Thesis advisor | Palumbi, Stephen R |
| Advisor | Dirzo, Rodolfo |
| Advisor | Kuris, Armand |
| Advisor | Lafferty, Kevin |
| Advisor | Palumbi, Stephen R |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Chelsea L. Wood. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Biology. |
| Thesis | Ph.D. Stanford University 2013 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Chelsea Lynne Wood
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