A diversity of macro- and microparasitic species exert strong influences on wildlife population density, community structure, and ecosystem functioning, all through their impacts on individual host fitness. Through consuming, manipulating, and relocating wildlife feces, over 7,000 species of coprophagous dung beetles interact with a staggering diversity of wildlife parasites with fecal-oral transmission in ways that both increase and decrease transmission. Here, we review the mechanisms by which dung beetles influence micro- and macroparasite transmission and outline a future research framework that integrates theory and empirical insights to advance our understanding of how these relationships may interact with ongoing environmental change drivers to further influence wildlife populations and community structure. Any organism that significantly influences parasite transmission will impact multiple levels of biological organization. Therefore, improving our understanding of the role of dung beetle interactions within disease ecology will be key to future efforts to understand the overall dynamics of infection in wildlife and how parasites contribute to the maintenance of ecosystem structure and function and evolutionary processes in wild animals.

中文翻译：

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同食性昆虫与野生动物传染病生态学。

各种各样的宏观和微观寄生物种都通过影响个体寄主的健康状况而对野生生物种群密度，社区结构和生态系统功能产生强烈影响。通过食用，操纵和转移野生动植物粪便，超过7,000种共食性粪便甲虫与粪便和口腔传播的野生生物寄生虫种类繁多，以增加和减少传播的方式相互作用。在这里，我们回顾了粪甲虫影响微观和宏观寄生虫传播的机制，并概述了一个未来的研究框架，该框架将理论和实证见解相结合，以加深我们对这些关系如何与持续的环境变化驱动因素相互作用以进一步影响野生动植物种群和社区的理解。结构体。任何严重影响寄生虫传播的生物都会影响生物组织的多个层次。因此，增进对粪便甲虫相互作用在疾病生态学中的作用的理解将是未来努力了解野生动植物感染的整体动态以及寄生虫如何有助于维持野生动物的生态系统结构和功能以及进化过程的关键。