Disease control strategies can have both intended and unintended effects on the dynamics of infectious diseases. Routine testing for the harmful pathogen Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) was suspended briefly during the foot and mouth disease epidemic of 2001 in Great Britain. Here we utilize bTB incidence data and mathematical models to demonstrate how a lapse in management can alter epidemiological parameters, including the rate of new infections and duration of infection cycles. Testing interruption shifted the dynamics from annual to 4-year cycles, and created long-lasting shifts in the spatial synchrony of new infections among regions of Great Britain. After annual testing was introduced in some GB regions, new infections have become more de-synchronised, a result also confirmed by a stochastic model. These results demonstrate that abrupt events can synchronise disease dynamics and that changes in the epidemiological parameters can lead to chaotic patterns, which are hard to be quantified, predicted, and controlled.

• MeSH
• časoprostorová analýza * MeSH
• epidemický výskyt choroby * MeSH
• epidemiologické monitorování MeSH
• incidence MeSH
• Mycobacterium bovis izolace a purifikace   MeSH
• skot MeSH
• statistické modely * MeSH
• stochastické procesy MeSH
• tuberkulóza skotu epidemiologie   mikrobiologie   přenos   MeSH
• zvířata MeSH
• Check Tag
• skot MeSH
• zvířata MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Spojené království epidemiologie   MeSH

Direct effects of climate change on animal physiology, and indirect impacts from disruption of seasonal synchrony and breakdown of trophic interactions are particularly severe in Arctic and Alpine ecosystems. Unravelling biotic from abiotic drivers, however, remains challenging because high-resolution animal population data are often limited in space and time. Here, we show that variation in annual horn growth (an indirect proxy for individual performance) of 8043 male Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) over the past four decades is well synchronised among eight disjunct colonies in the eastern Swiss Alps. Elevated March to May temperatures, causing premature melting of Alpine snowcover, earlier plant phenology and subsequent improvement of ibex food resources, fuelled annual horn growth. These results reveal dependency of local trophic interactions on large-scale climate dynamics, and provide evidence that declining herbivore performance is not a universal response to global warming even for high-altitude populations that are also harvested.

• Klíčová slova
• Alpine ungulates, European Alps, body size, climate change, ecological response, horn growth, phenotypic plasticity, plant phenology, spatial synchrony, trophic interaction,
• MeSH
• klimatické změny * MeSH
• kozy růst a vývoj   MeSH
• lineární modely MeSH
• roční období * MeSH
• rohy růst a vývoj   MeSH
• teplota * MeSH
• zvířata MeSH
• Check Tag
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• zvířata MeSH
• Publikační typ
• dopisy MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Švýcarsko MeSH