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 decreas...

海洋传染性疾病的暴发已造成大范围大规模死亡，但由于缺乏基线数据，学界无法评估海洋中疾病的发生趋势究竟是上升还是下降。本研究采用Ward与Lafferty（2004）提出的成熟文献替代法，对1970年至2013年共计44年的全球标准化疾病报告记录展开分析。研究将主要海洋宿主划分为9个分类群（涵盖从海草到海洋哺乳动物的类群），以此评估疾病波动——疾病波动被定义为跨相关宿主的疾病报告在数十年尺度上的正向或负向变化。1970年至2013年间，珊瑚与海胆的标准化疾病报告量显著上升，表明这类对环境敏感的变温动物出现了正向疾病波动。加勒比海海域的珊瑚疾病报告量与温度异常升高呈显著相关，这为‘海洋变暖驱动传染性珊瑚疾病发生’的假说提供了支持。与此同时，在日益变化的海洋环境中，疾病风险也可能出现下降。相关疾病报告量呈下降趋势……