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Q&A ViewAttendees 6

Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology

Section Symposium

Opportunity, Constraint, or Mishap? Exploring Forces of Selection Acting on Parasitic Arthropods

Anthropogenically driven environmental changes alter host-parasite dynamics between a mosquito and its obligate parasite

Sunday, October 31, 2021
2:15 PM - 2:35 PM MT
Location: Colorado Convention Center, Meeting Room 301-303
In-Person
We now live in an epoch where humans are the predominant factor affecting our climate and environment. Increasingly, it is being recognized that anthropogenically driven changes have consequences not only for the ecology, but also the evolution, of species. Among the most pervasive changes are a warming climate, the ubiquity of invasive species, and artificial light at night. We will present data from a series of field and lab experiments which demonstrate that these factors have the potential to influence the severity, and incidence, of gregarine infections in their mosquito hosts. Gregarines (Phylum: Apicomplexa) are relatively species specific parasites with widespread distribution in container Aedes mosquitoes in the eastern US. Early studies on the interactions between Ascogregarina barretti and Aedes triseriatus dismissed these parasites as unimportant, citing low fitness costs of infection. The data we will present will show, however, that anthropogenic impacts can greatly affect infection rates and outcomes including total infection clearance with warming temperatures and 100% larval host mortality when reared with invasive plant detritus. We will discuss the potential evolutionary consequences of these altered interactions.