Abstract
PaV1 is a pathogenic virus found only to infect Caribbean spiny lobsters Panulirus argus, a major fishing resource. P. argus is a benthic mesopredator and has a complex life history, with several ontogenetic habitat changes. Habitat characteristics and species diversity of surrounding communities may have implications for disease dynamics. This is of more concern for juvenile lobsters, which are more susceptible to PaV1 and are far less mobile than adult lobsters. We targeted a population of juvenile P. argus in a reef lagoon in Mexico, where PaV1 was first observed in 2001. Prevalence has been since irregularly assessed, but in 2016 we began a more systematic assessment, with two sampling periods per year (June and November) in three different zones of the reef lagoon. To examine the relationship between PaV1 prevalence and potential ecological determinants, we assessed habitat complexity, cover of different substrates, and invertebrate community composition in all zones during the first four sampling periods (June and November 2016 and 2017). Habitat complexity and percent cover of some substrates varied with zone and sampling period. This was the case for seagrass and macroalgae, which nevertheless were the dominant substrates. The invertebrate community composition varied with sampling period, but not with zone. Probability of infection decreased with increasing lobster size, consistent with previous studies, but was not affected by zone (i.e., variations in ecological characteristics did not appear to be sufficiently large so as to influence prevalence of PaV1). This result possibly reflects the dominance of marine vegetation and suggests that lobsters can be sampled throughout the reef lagoon to assess PaV1 prevalence. Prevalence was higher in only one of seven sampling periods (November 2017), suggesting that the pathogen has leveled off to an enzootic level.
Highlights
The Caribbean spiny lobster Panulirus argus (Latreille, 1804) is an important fishing resource throughout the wider Caribbean region [1]
During the first four sampling periods (June and November 2016 and 2017), we examined habitat characteristics, the composition of invertebrate communities, and the size of lobsters in the different sampling zones to examine their potential relationship with Panulirus argus virus 1 (PaV1) prevalence
The stress values were relatively high (0.16–0.19) in three of the four periods, but 3D ordination plots with stress values of 0.11–0.14 corroborated the great overlap among zones. This was further confirmed by analysis of similarity tests, which yielded R values of 0.067 for June 2016, 0.046 for November 2017, 0.144 for June 2017, and 0.115 for November 2017
Summary
The Caribbean spiny lobster Panulirus argus (Latreille, 1804) is an important fishing resource throughout the wider Caribbean region [1] This species has a complex life history with several ontogenetic habitat changes. P. argus are omnivorous mesopredators and play an important ecological role in Caribbean coral reefs systems [3,4,5], but they are susceptible to parasites and diseases [6]. They are hosts to Panulirus argus virus 1 (PaV1), the first known naturally occurring virus of a lobster. PaV1 prevalence has been correlated with lobster size, being found more in smaller, juvenile lobsters [12,13], and with habitat, being found more in highly-vegetated habitats [14,15,16], suggesting that vegetation may be acting as an environmental reservoir for the virus
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