Experimental warming drives a seasonal shift in the timing of host-parasite dynamics with consequences for disease risk.

Abstract

Multi-species experiments are critical for identifying the mechanisms through which climate change influences population dynamics and community interactions within ecological systems, including infectious diseases. Using a host-parasite system involving freshwater snails, amphibians and trematode parasites, we conducted a year-long, outdoor experiment to evaluate how warming affected net parasite production, the timing of infection and the resultant pathology. Warming of 3 °C caused snail intermediate hosts to release parasites 9 months earlier and increased infected snail mortality by fourfold, leading to decreased overlap between amphibians and parasites. As a result, warming halved amphibian infection loads and reduced pathology by 67%, despite comparable total parasite production across temperature treatments. These results demonstrate that climate-disease theory should be expanded to account for predicted changes in host and parasite phenology, which may often be more important than changes in total parasite output for predicting climate-driven changes in disease risk.