Meeting Abstract
Global biodiversity is being lost at an alarming rate due to anthropogenic activities. Concurrently, emerging infectious diseases affecting both wildlife and human populations are becoming an increasing concern implying that biodiversity and infectious diseases are linked. The dilution effect suggests that more diverse communities constrain pathogen infection due to an increase in abundance of incompetent host species. We aim to explore the relationship between amphibian community structure and dynamics of two infectious diseases- Ranavirus (RV) and Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). Previous studies suggest a dilution effect for amphibian diseases, but were conducted in areas with low host diversity. Our study site is the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The SRS contains 100’s of wetlands and over 30 species of pond-breeding amphibians. In addition, preliminary surveys indicate widespread occurrence of RV and Bd. In order to investigate the relationship between amphibian biodiversity and disease, we first need to 1) characterize the amphibian communities of wetlands and 2) examine the drivers of amphibian communities. From January to July of 2016, we surveyed and gathered amphibian community data for 20 ephemeral wetlands of varying hydroperiods. Wetlands were sampled monthly using standardized dipnet and minnow trap transects. Greater than 20,000 individual amphibians were captured and documented across 23 species. We used Akaike Information Criteria and the top models for explaining the Chao 1 species richness index all included some combination of sampling time, wetland group and/or hydroperiod. We are still currently investigating other environmental factors that could be important drivers of community structure.
