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Data from: Minor environmental concentrations of antibiotics can modify bacterial virulence in co-infection with a non-targeted parasite

Cite this dataset

Sundberg, Lotta-Riina; Karvonen, Anssi (2018). Data from: Minor environmental concentrations of antibiotics can modify bacterial virulence in co-infection with a non-targeted parasite [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.g07kg88

Abstract

Leakage of medical residues into the environment can significantly impact natural communities. For example, antibiotic contamination from agriculture and aquaculture can directly influence targeted pathogens, but also other non-targeted taxa of commensals and parasites that regularly co-occur and co-infect the same host. Consequently, antibiotics could significantly alter interspecific interactions and epidemiology of the co-infecting parasite community. We studied how minor environmental concentration of antibiotic affects the coinfection of two parasites, the bacterium Flavobacterium columnare and the fluke Diplostomum pseudospathaceum, in their fish host. We found that antibiotic in feed, and particularly the minute concentration in water, significantly decreased bacterial virulence and changed the infection success of the flukes. These effects depended on the level of antibiotic resistance of the bacterial strains. Antibiotic, however, did not compensate for the higher virulence of co-infections. Our results demonstrate that even very low environmental concentration of antibiotic can influence ecology and epidemiology of diseases in co-infection with non-targeted parasites. Leakage of antibiotics into the environment may thus have more complex effects on disease ecology than previously anticipated.

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