ArticleThe Journal of applied ecology2021
Disentangling interactions among mercury, immunity and infection in a Neotropical bat community.
Article in The Journal of applied ecology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Validating Wing Biopsies for Blood-Borne Pathogen Characterization in Bats.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Relationship between Hg accumulation and diet in bats from Atlantic forest reserves.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2026Article
- A general framework for modeling pathogen transmission in co-roosting host communities.Ecology · 2026Article
- Understanding Climate Change Threats to Vertebrate Wildlife by Studying Ecoimmunology Across Biological Scales.Integrative and comparative biology · 2025Review
- A Collaborative Multiple Stressor Approach for Identifying Spatial Heterogeneities in Wildlife Health and Conservation Priorities.Integrative and comparative biology · 2025Article
- Viral epidemic potential is not uniformly distributed across the bat phylogeny.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Habitat and seasonal drivers of leukocyte profiles within and across Neotropical bat species.Biology letters · 2025Article
- A paired analysis of mercury among non-invasive tissues in Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) to inform conservation monitoring.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2025Article
- Impacts of Metals on Infectious Diseases in Wildlife and Zoonotic Spillover.Journal of xenobiotics · 2025Review
- Presence of Mercury in an Arid Zone of Mexico: A Perspective Based on Biomonitoring of Mammals from Three Trophic Guilds.Biology · 2024Article
- Natural mercury exposure of European insectivorous bats may exceed a recognized toxicity threshold.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2024Article
- A paired analysis of mercury among non-invasive tissues to inform bat conservation monitoring.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Bat cellular immunity varies by year and dietary habit amidst land conversion.Conservation physiology · 2024Article
- Avian influenza antibody prevalence increases with mercury contamination in wild waterfowl.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Contaminant exposure as an additional stressor to bats affected by white-nose syndrome: current evidence and knowledge gaps.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2022Review
- Disentangling interactions among mercury, immunity and infection in a Neotropical bat community.The Journal of applied ecology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors at 12 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
1. Contaminants such as mercury are pervasive and can have immunosuppressive effects on wildlife. Impaired immunity could be important for forecasting pathogen spillover, as many land-use changes that generate mercury contamination also bring wildlife into close contact with humans and domestic animals. However, the interactions among contaminants, immunity and infection are difficult to study in natural systems, and empirical tests of possible directional relationships remain rare. 2. We capitalized on extreme mercury variation in a diverse bat community in Belize to test association among contaminants, immunity and infection. By comparing a previous dataset of bats sampled in 2014 with new data from 2017, representing a period of rapid agricultural land conversion, we first confirmed bat species more reliant on aquatic prey had higher fur mercury. Bats in the agricultural habitat also had higher mercury in recent years. We then tested covariation between mercury and cellular immunity and determined if such relationships mediated associations between mercury and bacterial pathogens. As bat ecology can dictate exposure to mercury and pathogens, we also assessed species-specific patterns in mercury-infection relationships. 3. Across the bat community, individuals with higher mercury had fewer neutrophils but not lymphocytes, suggesting stronger associations with innate immunity. However, the odds of infection for haemoplasmas and
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.