Publications by authors named "Lisa A Stevenson"
Environmental temperature is a crucial abiotic factor that influences the success of ectothermic organisms, including hosts and pathogens in disease systems. One example is the amphibian chytrid fungus, (), which has led to widespread amphibian population declines. Understanding its thermal ecology is essential to effectively predict outbreaks.
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- The impact of wildlife diseases, like chytridiomycosis in amphibians, varies based on host behavior and environmental factors.
- Laboratory tests on the rainforest frog Litoria rheocola show that specific thermal conditions experienced by frogs can significantly affect the growth of the chytrid fungus, indicating that how frogs regulate their body temperatures can influence disease susceptibility.
- The study's findings suggest that if tropical frogs manage to maintain higher body temperatures through behaviors like basking, they might mitigate disease effects, but environmental constraints could also leave them more vulnerable, especially in complex ecosystems.
Article Synopsis
- Host behavior and thermal environments can significantly influence how susceptible different species are to diseases like chytridiomycosis, which affects amphibians differently.
- Researchers mimicked natural temperatures of frogs to study pathogen growth, finding that certain frogs (like L. serrata) had slower pathogen growth at their thermal regimes, while others (like L. rheocola) showed faster growth at higher elevations.
- Understanding these thermal interactions helps explain frog population declines and could aid in predicting future disease outbreaks.
Rates of growth and reproduction of the pathogens that cause emerging infectious diseases can be affected by local environmental conditions; these conditions can thus influence the strength and nature of disease outbreaks. An understanding of these relationships is important for understanding disease ecology and developing mitigation strategies. Widespread emergence of the fungal disease chytridiomycosis has had devastating effects on amphibian populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe maternal and developmental toxicities of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS, C8F17SO3-) were evaluated in the rat and mouse. PFOS is an environmentally persistent compound used as a surfactant and occurs as a degradation product of both perfluorooctane sulfonyl fluoride and substituted perfluorooctane sulfonamido components found in many commercial and consumer applications. Pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats were given 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10 mg/kg PFOS daily by gavage from gestational day (GD) 2 to GD 20; CD-1 mice were similarly treated with 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20 mg/kg PFOS from GD 1 to GD 17.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe postnatal effects of in utero exposure to perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS, C8F17SO3-) were evaluated in the rat and mouse. Pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats were given 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10 mg/kg PFOS daily by gavage from gestation day (GD) 2 to GD 21; pregnant CD-1 mice were treated with 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20 mg/kg PFOS from GD 1 to GD 18. Controls received 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPerfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS, CaF17SO3-) has been identified in the serum of nonoccupationally exposed humans and in serum and liver tissue in wildlife. The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether PFOS liver concentrations in humans are comparable to the approximate 30 ng/mL average serum concentrations reported in nonoccupationally exposed subjects. Thirty-one donors (16 male and 15 female, age range 5-74) provided serum and/or liver samples for analysis of PFOS and three other fluorochemicals: perfluorosulfonamide (PFOSA, C8F17SO2NH2), perfluorooctanoate (PFOA, C7F15CO2-), and perfluorohexanesulfonate (PFHxS, C6F13SO3-).
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