R. Soc. Open Sci. http://doi.org/446 (2015)
Parasitic nematodes (helminths) pose a significant and widespread problem for grazing livestock with implications for animal welfare and food production. Parasite distribution and infestation levels are strongly climate dependant — having already altered under ongoing climatic changes — yet projections of these impacts on future parasite risk remain sparse.
Naomi J. Fox from the Disease Systems Team, SRUC, UK, and co-workers combine a model of helminth transmission dynamics with a host grazing model to investigate the potential for climate change to influence livestock infections.
They find that changes in temperature-sensitive parameters related to survival and development of the parasites' free-living stages, over-winter survival and behavioural characteristics of the host can have nonlinear effects on nematode parasite burdens. This suggests that minor alterations in temperature around particular thresholds could cause dramatic changes in the intensity of parasitic nematode outbreaks.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Brown, A. Livestock parasite outbreaks. Nature Clim Change 5, 621 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2706
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2706
