title: Climate change and Arctic parasites.
abstract: Climate is changing rapidly in the Arctic. This has important implications for parasites of Arctic ungulates, and hence for the welfare of Arctic peoples who depend on caribou, reindeer, and muskoxen for food, income, and a focus for cultural activities. In this Opinion article we briefly review recent work on the development of predictive models for the impacts of climate change on helminth parasites and other pathogens of Arctic wildlife, in the hope that such models may eventually allow proactive mitigation and conservation strategies. We describe models that have been developed using the metabolic theory of ecology. The main strength of these models is that they can be easily parameterized using basic information about the physical size of the parasite. Initial results suggest they provide important new insights that are likely to generalize to a range of host-parasite systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Eno Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. Electronic address: Dobson@princeton.edu.
authors.forename: Andy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dobson
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Péter K
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Molnár
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecosystem and Public Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Calgary, 3330 Hospital Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kutz
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000835:Animals, Wild / Q000469:parasitology; D001110:Arctic Regions; D057231:Climate Change; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010271:Parasites / Q000502:physiology; D010273:Parasitic Diseases, Animal / Q000635:transmission*
keywords: Arctic; caribou; climate; metabolic theory; muskoxen; parasitic helminths