Parasites can majorly impact both harvest quality, by damaging harvestable tissue or compromising the viability of live catch, and quantity by reducing host populations. Additionally, disease impacts on key members of ecological communities can in turn influence the host-parasite dynamics of other species and wider ecological functions.
During my Master’s research, I constructed an integrated model that combined bioenergetics, population, and compartmental disease modeling to understand how H. sutherlandae would impact recreational Perca flavescens (yellow perch) harvest. This model was informed by experiments and field sampling I had conducted in this system and predicted both the loss of biomass due to reduced yellow perch populations and the reduction of consumable catch due to the sub-lethal destruction of muscle tissue by the parasite. This simulation model indicated that fishery was far more vulnerable to changes in climate than to the influences of this infectious disease.
The manuscript detailing the experimental work supporting this research can be found here: https://academic.oup.com/jaah/article/33/2/84/7814836
My Master’s thesis can be found here: https://www.proquest.com/openview/6ff001a9efd4bc92f2f7b4e951af4052/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750
And exploratory modeling in this system is published here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199580
