pollution exerts a multifaceted and detrimental impact on parasite communities within coastal ecosystems. By compromising host immune systems, disrupting host behaviors, degrading habitats, and directly affecting parasites, pollution disrupts the delicate balance of parasite-host interactions. This can lead to increased disease prevalence, loss of biodiversity, and significant economic repercussions for coastal communities reliant on fisheries and aquaculture.
Pollution profoundly impacts parasite communities in coastal ecosystems by disrupting host-parasite dynamics through multiple pathways. Contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and microplastics compromise host immune systems, increase susceptibility to infections, and alter host behaviors, thereby facilitating parasite transmission. Habitat degradation from pollutants, including eutrophication and plastic debris, reduces the availability of suitable environments for parasites and hosts, often leading to biodiversity loss. Additionally, pollutants can directly impair free-living parasite stages or disrupt their life cycles, while altered ecosystem dynamics may shift host distributions and favor generalist parasites. These changes not only elevate disease prevalence but also reduce ecosystem resilience, with significant ecological and economic repercussions for fisheries and aquaculture-dependent communities.
Coastal ecosystems often face multiple stresses, including pollution. Some of the most notable effects of pollution on parasites include: Pollution can increase mortality of host species - It can weaken the immune systems of host species - It can lead to loss of biodiversity - It can lead to habitat degradation...
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Parasites as Pollution Indicators in Marine Ecosystems: a Proposed Early Warning System
Ken Mackenzie
Marine Pollution Bulletin
Volume 38, Issue 11, November 1999, Pages 955-959
[Abstract
There are good reasons for focusing on parasites in the search for indicators to monitor the effects of pollutants on marine organisms. Firstly, there are more parasitic than free-living species. Secondly, in parasites with complex life cycles, the different stages have widely differing requirements, so that each stage must be assessed separately, thereby greatly increasing the number of potential indicators. Thirdly, many parasites have delicate free-living transmission stages which are highly sensitive to environmental change. A reduction in their levels of infection will serve as an early warning that changes are occurring. Conversely, other parasites are highly resistant to environmental change and will respond by increased levels of infection. As a general rule, infections with endoparasitic helminths tend to decrease, while infections with ectoparasites tend to increase, with increasing levels of pollution.]
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