CO-INFECTION

Causes and consequences of multiple infections in animal and human health

Research Pathway: Wildlife Health and Disease

RYC-2016-21120 «Ramón y Cajal Agreement», Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MINECO, Gobierno de España. Period: 2018-2022.

Thanks to a fruitful collaboration with the Kutz research lab, in Calgary (http://people.ucalgary.ca/~kutzrg/index.html) we have described how parasites influence foetal development and sex allocation of Dall’s sheep (Ovis dalli dalli).

Our objectives were...

To determine the association of faetal development with the mother’s age, body condition, and infection intensity with gastrointestinal parasites, and to determine the association of foetus sex allocation with the same extrauterine factors

We conducted a combination of Partial Least Square Path Modelling approach to study causal relationships based on observational data, and traditional regression. What we found...

A negative effect of parasite community on foetal development, driven primarily by the nematode Marshallagia marshalli. Principal component analysis demonstrated that mothers with low parasite burden and in good body condition were more likely to have female versus male foetuses. This association was primarily driven by the indirect effect of M. marshalli on ewe body condition