Abstract
AbstractOutbreaks of wildlife diseases are occurring at an unprecedented rate. In French Guiana, recurrent episodes of frigatebird chicks’ mortality due to a viral disease that first appeared in 2005 have recently turned into massive mortality episodes (85–95%) of chicks. One of the suggested hypotheses behind the appearance of the disease is food limitation due to the recent decline of local shrimp fishery boats on which frigatebirds rely for opportunistic feeding. We therefore experimentally fish‐supplemented frigatebird chicks with and without clinical signs of the disease. Food supplementation protected all chicks from the appearance of clinical signs of the disease and increased survival perspectives of sick chicks. These results suggest that food shortage might decrease resistance of chicks to infectious diseases and that using a specifically tailored food supplementation regime could be a complimentary tool to protect frigatebirds and other endangered birds from disease outbreaks threatening them with extinction.
Highlights
There is growing recognition that infectious diseases impact negatively wildlife (Smith, Sax, & Lafferty, 2006)
These results suggest that food shortage might decrease resistance of chicks to infectious diseases and that using a tailored food supplementation regime could be a complimentary tool to protect frigatebirds and other endangered birds from disease outbreaks threatening them with extinction
Two general linear models were used to test whether there were any differences among groups in pretreatment values of body condition and CORT: (i) among chicks classified on the severity of clinical signs; and (ii) among chicks classified according to the progress of the disease
Summary
There is growing recognition that infectious diseases impact negatively wildlife (Smith, Sax, & Lafferty, 2006). Previous work has investigated how the nutritional status of the host can influence the outcome of the infection (e.g., Becker, Streicker, & Altizer, 2015; Murray, Becker, Hall, & Hernandez, 2016; Tollington et al, 2015; Sánchez et al, 2018). Recent meta-analyses showed that food provisioning results in highly heterogeneous infection outcomes that depend on pathogen type (Becker et al, 2015; Sánchez et al, 2018). Becker et al (2015) showed that the effects of food provisioning on viral infections are underrepresented as compared to other pathogens
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