About this Research Topic

Background

Successful survival of a species in the aquatic environment is directly linked to its tolerance to environmental change, access to food resources and resistance against disease. Climate change, together with other anthropogenic stressors, is strongly predicted to have an influence on immunity, and to cause the emergence of diseases, introducing new pathogens to previously unexposed host populations and altering host-pathogen-(vector) interactions. The combined impact of global warming, acidification and deoxygenation driven by climate change are having dramatic effects on aquatic ecosystems, effects which are further exacerbated by other anthropogenic stresses, such as pollution. It is essential to provide knowledge if, and how, the immune system in aquatic organisms will tolerate and adapt to these combined challenges, or whether debilitation of immune competence will result in an increased occurrence and severity of infective diseases.

The Research Topic aims to provide knowledge regarding the relationships between, and combined effects of, climate change and other pressures like pollutants and infectious diseases on aquatic ecosystems. The complexity of the immune system makes it challenging to select appropriate exposure and effect parameters, and also to evaluate the significance of the selected parameters for the overall fitness and immune competence of the organism. Measured parameters may not influence the outcome of infection, and more importantly, adverse effects of stressors may only be detectable after immune system activation, and not in the resting immune system of a noninfected host. Hence, this Topic will draw attention to the importance of including an infective challenge when investigating altered immune function caused by combined environmental influences, and to consider both direct and indirect effects, as well as interactions, of the stressors on the immune response. Additionally, it should be emphasized that the cumulative effects of several stressors may differ markedly from observed effects of single stressors and they may not only pose a challenge to disease resistance in the host, but also to disease tolerance.

Manuscripts submitted to this Research Topic should present (i) approaches and concepts how to assess the impact of man-made environmental change on the immune system of aquatic organisms, (ii) investigations into the mechanisms through which anthropogenic stressors, single or multiple, impact the immune system of aquatic organisms, and (iii) cases and examples on the outcomes of anthropogenically induced altered immunity for the fitness (survival, disease, health, reproduction, growth, genetic diversity, geographical distribution, etc. ) of aquatic organisms.
Studies, in vitro or in vivo, which address the combined effects (inhibitory, additive or synergistic) of environmental stress (temperature, pollution, pH levels) on immunity following infection, including both disease resistance and tolerance, as well as addressing pathway interactions between immunity/disease and anthropogenic stressors, will clearly fit within the scope of the Research Topic.

Keywords: anthropogenic pollution, climate change, combined exposures, disease resistance, tolerance, infection

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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