Meeting Abstract
Many animals, both endothermic and ectothermic, regulate their body temperature to cope with environmental stressors, including infection. Behavioral thermoregulation in response to disease has been observed in almost all ectothermic taxa including reptiles, amphibians, bony fish, and invertebrates. Using amphibian hosts and two waterborne pathogens, we aim to: (1) determine the desired temperatures of amphibian hosts and the degree of variability in temperature among individuals by observing animals in thermal gradient chambers, (2) determine how the thermal preferences of individuals change after pathogen exposure, and (3) determine whether changes in behavioral preference reduce actual pathogen abundance on hosts relative to uninfected hosts and infected hosts that are kept kept at their preferred temperature and cannot thermoregulate. The waterborne pathogens I will utilize in my experiments, the chytridiomycosis causing fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and the ranavirus frog virus 3 (FV3), have been implicated in global amphibian declines. Additionally, both pathogens have some level of temperature sensitivity; Bd can be cleared from amphibian hosts when housed above 30°C and Ambystoma tigrinum virus (ATV) (a ranavirus closely related to FV3) can be cleared from hosts when housed above 26°C.
