Higher temperature extremes exacerbate negative disease effects in a social mammal

Maria Paniw (), Chris Duncan, Frank Groenewoud, Julian A. Drewe, Marta Manser, Arpat Ozgul and Tim Clutton-Brock
Additional contact information
Maria Paniw: Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC)
Chris Duncan: University of Cambridge
Frank Groenewoud: University of Cambridge
Julian A. Drewe: Hawkshead Lane
Marta Manser: University of Zurich
Arpat Ozgul: University of Zurich
Tim Clutton-Brock: University of Cambridge

Nature Climate Change, 2022, vol. 12, issue 3, 284-290

Abstract: Abstract One important but understudied way in which climate change may impact the fitness of individuals and populations is by altering the prevalence of infectious disease outbreaks. This is especially true in social species where endemic diseases are widespread. Here we use 22 years of demographic data from wild meerkats (Suricata suricatta) in the Kalahari, where temperatures have risen steadily, to project group persistence under interactions between weather extremes and fatal tuberculosis outbreaks caused by infection with Mycobacterium suricattae. We show that higher temperature extremes increase the risk of outbreaks within groups by increasing physiological stress as well as the dispersal of males, which are important carriers of tuberculosis. Explicitly accounting for negative effects of tuberculosis outbreaks on survival and reproduction in groups more than doubles group extinction risk in 12 years under projected temperature increases. Synergistic climate–disease effects on demographic rates may therefore rapidly intensify climate-change impacts in natural populations.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01284-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:12:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1038_s41558-022-01284-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-022-01284-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().