From incidence to impact: quantifying the emergence and ecological consequences of a parasite outbreak in marine fishes

Parasites can profoundly affect host health and behavior. This project examines how these effects scale up, from infection in individual host organisms to potential ecosystem-level consequences. By leveraging museum collections, community science, and cutting-edge artificial intelligence-driven video analysis, the team is examining the effects of Black Spot Syndrome (BSS) on the herbivorous behavior of coral reef fish. These fish provide critical coral reef ecosystem services by controlling fast-growing macroalgae that can otherwise outcompete and smother corals, causing ecosystem decline. The project also supports research training for a postdoctoral scientist, graduate students, and undergraduates, a community science surveillance program where people can upload photographs of BSS from across the Caribbean and visualize observations, development of a video series on parasites in marine ecosystems and educational modules for K-12 students. The results of this project inform the management of economically valuable coral reefs and fish populations. This project examines how the effects of parasites scale up from infection in individual hosts to consequences for entire ecosystems. Data from 1) long-term archived museum samples, 2) video-based observations along reef transects and analysis of community-science imagery, and 3) underwater stereo-video of behavioral experiments, analyzed with computer vision-based artificial intelligence, are being integrated to develop computational models that simulate how BSS infection in coral reef fish affects herbivory at the ecosystem scale. The results advance understanding of how BSS influences the ecological resilience of coral reefs to macroalgal dominance and of the emergence and ecological roles of parasites in complex natural ecosystems. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.