Plagued by drought: how water scarcity reshapes host–parasite interactions

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By Pieter Johnson and Tara Stewart Merrill, Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 

Excerpt: Drought is becoming a defining ecological force, yet its consequences for infectious diseases remain difficult to predict across systems. Emerging evidence shows that water limitation can intensify many water-associated diseases, challenging assumptions that drying suppresses transmission. Rather than acting solely as a climatic stressor, drought restructures transmission by altering host aggregation, parasite persistence, community composition, and contact networks across space and time. Divergent disease responses to drought can be explained through three recurring mechanisms: the concentration of interactions, the ecological filtering of communities, and spatial heterogeneity in transmission. Viewing drought as a multiscale ecological restructuring process provides a general framework for predicting disease outcomes in an increasingly water-limited world.... 

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