D3015: Macroinvertebrate-microbial dynamics: An environmental pathogen case study

Each year, waterborne infectious disease agents negatively impact millions of people with limited or poor access to clean water. A notable increase in both pathogen incidence and geographic distribution (including developed countries) of disease outbreaks due to pathogens harboured in contaminated water have raised serious concerns about waterborne zoonotic pathogens, and highlights the need for disease monitoring. Generalist microorganisms are the agents of a number of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs). However, due to the vast range of potential hosts and environmental reservoirs, their natural life cycles can be elusive to identify. For many, a link to freshwater aquatic systems and their microbe-rich sediments and substrates are established. Since these often ubiquitous pathogens are found in a variety of waterbodies, interactions with aquatic organisms are to be expected. Given the complex relationships between aquatic and terrestrial habitats and EIDs, investigating the potential relevance of species community composition, structure, and species life history traits in disease risk assessments and mapping is of utmost importance. The initial step in understanding the potential role of macroinvertebrates in the ecology of water-borne pathogens is the identification of relative abundances and composition of the macroinvertebrate communities in relation to the disease (and its causative agent). Here, we investigated the macroinvertebrate community compositions at waterbodies along the Gulf Coast of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to identify if aquatic macroinvertebrate biodiversity differences were linked to the presence or absence of an environmental pathogen that causes disease across several host animals, including humans.