Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
DOI
10.1098/rsbl.2025.0579
Publication Title
Biology Letters
Volume
21
Issue
12
Pages
20250579
Abstract
Infectious disease plays a key role in shaping marine communities, including in seagrass meadows, which form biodiverse coastal habitats. Eelgrass (Zostera marina) is the most widespread seagrass species and is susceptible to seagrass wasting disease, caused by the protist Labyrinthula zosterae. As a foundation species, eelgrass strongly influences ecosystem structure, function and services; recent work has begun to explore the links between critical community interactions and seagrass wasting disease. Here, we highlight recent advances about how the eelgrass community regulates and responds to seagrass wasting disease, from the microbiome to herbivores and filter feeders. We further show how efforts to model seagrass wasting disease progression can build on prior efforts to predict eelgrass growth and productivity and can inform our understanding of ecosystem health, resilience and vulnerability. As climate change alters environmental conditions, potentially favouring the wasting disease pathogen, efforts to integrate community interactions with disease ecology will be critical to forecast ecosystem dynamics and to develop effective coastal management strategies. We offer guidance on addressing major knowledge gaps in the study of eelgrass wasting disease in order to deepen both ecological theory and applied practices and identify how an integrated marine-disease-community ecology can inform a broader, cross-cutting understanding of disease.
Rights
© 2025 The Authors.
Published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability
Article states: "The article has no additional data."
Original Publication Citation
Aoki, L. R., Graham, O. J., Yoshioka, R. M., Maher, R., Alma, L., Hofmann, E. E., Burge, C. A., Harvell, D., & Groner, M. L. (2025). Wasting disease of a marine foundation species links community interactions to disease dynamics. Biology Letters, 21(12), Article 20250579. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0579
Repository Citation
Aoki, Lillian R.; Graham, Olivia J.; Yoshioka, Reyn M.; Maher, Rebecca; Alma, Lindsay; Hofmann, Eileen E.; Burge, Colleen A.; Harvell, Drew; and Groner, Maya L., "Wasting Disease of a Marine Foundation Species Links Community Interactions to Disease Dynamics" (2025). CCPO Publications. 409.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/ccpo_pubs/409
ORCID
0000-0001-6710-4371 (Hofmann)
Included in
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, Environmental Health and Protection Commons, Pathogenic Microbiology Commons, Plant Sciences Commons