Seasonal dynamics and repeatability of gastrointestinal parasite burdens in wild Soay sheep

Abstract

Seasonality is a ubiquitous feature of wildlife disease ecology, but is determined by a complex interplay of environmental, parasitological and host factors. Gastrointestinal parasites often exhibit strong seasonal dynamics in wild vertebrate populations due to, for example, environmental influences on free-living or vectored life stages, and variation in the physiological and immune status of hosts across their annual cycle. At the same time, wild populations are typically infected with multiple parasites. The seasonal dynamics of co-infecting parasites may differ depending on age and reproductive status, and associations among parasites may be driven by short-term within-individual changes or longer-term interactions that are consistent among hosts. Here, we used faecal samples and egg counts collected repeatedly from individually marked and monitored wild Soay sheep that were part of a long-term study to investigate seasonal dynamics of six gastrointestinal parasite groups (strongyle nematodes, coccidian protozoa, Capillaria, Strongyloides, Nematodirus, and Moniezia). Prevalence and abundance generally tended to be higher spring and summer, and burdens were higher in lambs than adults. Within the highly prevalent strongyle nematode group, we found differences in seasonality of egg counts depending on adult reproductive status. Reproductive ewes had increased counts in spring around the time of birth followed by a drop in abundance in summer, while barren ewes showed little evidence of seasonality. Males showed a sustained rise in egg counts through spring and summer, and sex differences were only strongly apparent in summer. In contrast, in similarly prevalent coccidia we found a peak in faecal oocyst counts in spring but no differences in seasonality among males, barren and pregnant ewes. Using multivariate mixed-effects models, we went on to show that both strongyle and coccidia counts are moderately repeatable across seasons among individuals. We further show that apparent positive correlation between strongyle and coccidia counts was driven by short-term within-individual changes in both parasite burdens rather than long-term among-individual covariation. Overall, our results demonstrate that seasonality varies across demographic and parasite groups and highlight the value of investigating fluctuating susceptibility and exposure over time for understanding epidemiology of a population.