Host density thresholds and disease control for fisheries and aquaculture

By M. Krkošek. 2010

140 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The outbreak, persistence, and eradication of infectious diseases often depend on the density of hosts. In coastal seas, many fisheries are fully or over-exploited; meanwhile, farmed populations are increasing rapidly with aquaculture growth. Marine aquaculture facilities are typically open to the surrounding ecosystem and, therefore, wild and farmed populations are connected by their shared parasites. At the core of epidemiological theory are host density thresholds, above which diseases can persist or invade and below which diseases can be eradicated. Host density thresholds in aquaculture–fishery interactions likely function at regional scales that encompass multiple farms, which are connected by pathogen dispersal and the movement of wild hosts. Sudden outbreaks of parasitic copepods in wild-farmed salmon systems may be linked to aquaculture growth exceeding host density thresholds. Abiotic (e.g. temperature and salinity), management (e.g. husbandry and farm siting), and biotic factors (e.g. migrations of wild hosts) likely affect threshold values. A connected wild-farmed host population can exceed a host density threshold due to an influx of wild hosts via migration, increases in aquaculture production, or environmental change such as climate warming. Coastal management and policy should heed the disease implications of climate warming, aquaculture growth, and fisheries restoration that suggest increasing host densities and decreasing threshold values.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0dcb965a8863123efe859fc8b2eb9fa87a6dd997

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Citations in the corpus

Collateral diseases: Aquaculture impacts on wildlife infections (2020, background): “…and increase the virulence of pathogens (Kennedy et al., 2016) and (c) stocking densities in aquaculture settings are often much higher than would be found in natural environments which provides excellent condi - tions for pathogens and parasites to thrive (Krkošek, 2010; Salama & Murray, 2011).”
The Rising Tide of Antimicrobial Resistance in Aquaculture: Sources, Sinks and Solutions (2017, background): “Very little is known about the occurrence of AMR bacteria in RASs and those that have screened for AMR pathogens concluded that their presence could be explained by the use of infected fish stocks [94,95].”
Factors influencing disease-induced mortality of Pacific oysters Crassostrea gigas (2015, background): “This is also the case in finfish aquaculture (Krkošek 2010), where increased numbers of infectious fish lead to in - creased pathogen concentration in the surrounding environment, which in turn enhances the risk of pathogen transmission (Murray 2009).”
Disease interaction and pathogens exchange between wild and farmed fish populations with special reference to Norway (2011, background): “implications for the quantities of pathogens produced, and hence the infection pressure to which both farmed and wild fish are exposed (Krkošek, 2010).”
More rapid and severe disease outbreaks for aquaculture at the tropics: implications for food security (2013, background): “When combined with the crowded conditions of aquaculture facilities and warmer temperatures, this provides ideal conditions for outbreaks (Krkosek 2010; Mennerat et al. 2010; Salama & Murray 2011) that can lead to more severe mortality and rapid progression of diseases.”
Mass mortalities of Pacific oysters Crassostrea gigas reflect infectious diseases and vary with farming practices in the Mediterranean Thau lagoon, France (2012, background): “Dynamics of infectious diseases are related to the density of host populations (e.g. Krkošek 2010).”