Data from: Increases and decreases in marine disease reports in an era of global change

Outbreaks of marine infectious diseases have caused widespread mass
mortalities, but the lack of baseline data has precluded evaluating
whether disease is increasing or decreasing in the ocean. We use an
established literature proxy method from Ward and Lafferty (2004) to
analyze a 44-year global record of normalized disease reports from 1970 to
2013. Major marine hosts are combined into nine taxonomic groups, from
seagrasses to marine mammals, to assess disease swings, defined as
positive or negative multi-decadal shifts in disease reports across
related hosts. Normalized disease reports increased significantly between
1970 and 2013 in corals and urchins, indicating positive disease swings in
these environmentally sensitive ectotherms. Coral disease reports in the
Caribbean correlated with increasing temperature anomalies, supporting the
hypothesis that warming oceans drive infectious coral diseases. Meanwhile,
disease risk may also decrease in a changing ocean. Disease reports
decreased significantly in fish and elasmobranchs, which have experienced
steep human-induced population declines and diminishing population density
that, while concerning, may reduce disease. The increases and decreases in
disease reports across the 44-year record transcend short-term
fluctuations and regional variation. Our results show that long-term
changes in disease reports coincide with recent decades of widespread
environmental change in the ocean.