Infection dynamics of an oyster parasite in its newly expanded range

Defining Optimal Freshwater Flow for Oyster Production: Effects of Freshet Rate and Magnitude of Change and Duration on Eastern Oysters and Perkinsus marinus Infection

“…While low salinity and reduced osmolalities clearly are associated with reduced infection intensities, temperature is also held to be a dominant control on disease progression or reduction and must be considered in explaining disease dynamics Soniat 1996;Soniat and Kortright 1998). While low temperatures have been suggested to be critical in reducing infection intensities in colder waters (i.e., Oliver et al 1998;Ford and Smolowitz 2007), it is unlikely to have played a major role at our sites, which all experienced the same temperature regime with water temperatures never falling below 6°C. Exposure of P. marinus to low temperatures (<4°C) for 30 days in vitro was recently found to have minimal effect on viability (La Peyre et al 2008).…”

Implications of warming temperatures for population outbreaks of a nonindigenous species (Membranipora membranacea, Bryozoa) in rocky subtidal ecosystems

“…For example, in terrestrial environments, warming winter temperatures have caused increased severity and frequency of outbreaks of the mountain pine beetle Dendroctonus ponderosae in the forests of western Canada and the United States (Logan and Powell 2001). In marine environments in the northeastern United States, the spread and increased incidence of Dermo disease (Perkinsus marinus), a pathogen of the oyster Crassostrea virginica, has been attributed to warming winter and summer temperatures (Ford and Smolowitz 2007). Similarly, on the Great Barrier Reef, incidence of white syndrome, an emergent disease (or group of diseases) in Pacific reef-building corals, is positively related to the frequency of warm sea-surface temperature anomalies (Bruno et al 2007).…”

Anthropogenic impacts on an oyster metapopulation: Pathogen introduction, climate change and responses to natural selection

“…Although we cannot discount the possibility that genetic adaptation to local environments, especially low salinity, might stress oysters placed at high salinity and thus affect their ability to resist infection and disease, our experience with H. nelsoni and P. marinus over more than 50 years of testing various stocks at the Cape Shore site has never provided evidence that this is the case for these two pathogens. They are so virulent that they cause disease and mortality even in originally very healthy individuals -as illustrated by their impact on naïve wild populations wherever they have appeared along the northeast coast of North America (Burreson and Ford, 2004;Ford and Smolowitz, 2007;Ford and Tripp, 1996).…”