Surges in trematode prevalence linked to centennial-scale flooding events in the Adriatic

Abstract

The forecasts of increasing global temperature and sea level rise have led to concern about the response of parasites to anthropogenic climate change. Whereas ecological studies of parasite response to environmental shifts are necessarily limited to short time scales, the fossil record can potentially provide a quantitative archive of long-term ecological responses to past climate transitions. Here, we document multi-centennial scale changes in prevalence of trematodes infesting the bivalve host Abra segmentum through multiple sea-level fluctuations preserved in brackish Holocene deposits of the Po Plain, Italy. Prevalence values were significantly elevated (p < 0.01) in samples associated with flooding surfaces, yet the temporal trends of parasite prevalence and host shell length, cannot be explained by Waltherian facies change, host availability, salinity, diversity, turnover, or community structure. The observed surges in parasite prevalence during past flooding events indicate that the ongoing global warming and sea-level rise will lead to significant intensification of trematode parasitism, suppressed fecundity of common benthic organisms, and negative impacts on marine ecosystems, ecosystem services, and, eventually, to human well-being.

Three‐fold nature of coastal progradation during the Holocene eustatic highstand, Po Plain, Italy – close correspondence of stratal character with distribution patterns

“…The most abundant macrofossils are the brackish bivalve molluscs A. segmentum and Cerastoderma glaucum (Fig. 6B; Scarponi et al ., 2017b). Continental molluscs were also encountered.…”

Early-Middle Pleistocene benthic turnover and oxygen isotope stratigraphy from the Central Mediterranean (Valle di Manche, Crotone Basin, Italy): Data and trends

“…Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) and non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (nMDS) are two widely employed indirect ordination methods in palaeoecology. As both ordination techniques have different strengths and weaknesses, the best approach is to use both methods as a crosscheck on the robustness of the outputs [4] , [5] . Faunal counts were log-transformed to prevent distortion due to very abundant species.…”

Avaliação De Alterações De Linha De Costa a Partir Da Ferramenta De Imagens Históricas Do Google Earth: O Caso Da Praia De Itacuruçá (Mangaratiba (Rj) – Brasil)

“…Es probable que los parásitos desempeñen un papel crítico frente al cambio global, aumentando su resistencia y modificando sus ciclos de vida. Cuanto más compleja sea la forma de vida de un parásito, mayor margen de adaptación al medio presentan (Fortunato, 2015;Scarponi et al, 2017;Beyer et al, 2017) Por lo tanto, existe una considerable incertidumbre acerca de cómo la variación y el cambio del clima futuro afectarán la dinámica de las parasitosis (Rohr et al, 2011). Los factores estresantes múltiples pueden afectar los rasgos variados de la historia de la vida, lo que podría influir tanto en el parásito como en la condición física del hospededero.…”