Daniel J Becker, Gábor Á Czirják, Dmitriy V Volokhov, Alexandra B Bentz, Jorge E Carrera, Melinda S Camus, Kristen J Navara, Vladimir E Chizhikov, M Brock Fenton, Nancy B Simmons, Sergio E Recuenco, Amy T Gilbert, Sonia Altizer, Daniel G Streicker
Human activities create novel food resources that can alter wildlife-pathogen interactions. If resources amplify or dampen, pathogen transmission probably depends on both host ecology and pathogen biology, but studies that measure responses to provisioning across both scales are rare. We tested these relationships with a 4-year study of 369 common vampire bats across 10 sites in Peru and Belize that differ in the abundance of livestock, an important anthropogenic food source. We quantified innate and adaptive immunity from bats and assessed infection with two common bacteria...
May 5, 2018: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences