The Arctic as a model for anticipating, preventing, and mitigating climate change impacts on host-parasite interactions

Abstract

Climate change is influencing the structure and function of natural ecosystems around the world, including host-parasite interactions and disease emergence. Understanding the influence of climate change on infectious disease at temperate and tropical latitudes can be challenging because of numerous complicating biological, social, and political factors. Arctic and Subarctic regions may be particularly good models for unraveling the impacts of climate change on parasite ecology because they are relatively simple systems with low biological diversity and few other complicating anthropogenic factors. We examine some changing dynamics of host-parasite interactions at high latitudes and use these to illustrate a framework for approaching understanding, preventing, and mitigating climate change impacts on infectious disease, including zoonoses, in wildlife.