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Meeting Abstract

S4-7   11:00 - 11:30  Health and wellness checks in wild, coastal sharks: how immune assessment tools can inform conservation efforts Merly, L; University of Miami, Department of Marine Biology and Ecology, Miami, Florida lmerly@rsmas.miami.edu

Ecoimmunology combines immunology with ecology and evolution and examines the impact of environmental change on immunocompetence in wild populations. Coastal sharks are experiencing rapid changes in their environment and multiple anthropogenic stressors that can influence their behavior, habitat quality, nutritional status, and immune health. While sharks have been studied for several decades as a model for the evolution of vertebrate immune function, very few studies have investigated health and immunological parameters in the wild. Recent investigations have sought to develop field-based tools to assess wild shark health and condition. Shark health is defined here as a result of multiple factors with immune function serving as a major driver of health status. Results indicate that species-specific assessment tools such as hematological analyses, protein chemistry, and specific biomarkers may be used to evaluate health trends in wild populations and relate those to environmental variation. Changing coastal environments and exposure to pollutants such as heavy metals may influence various aspects of host health including microbiome composition, immune activation, and antioxidant defenses. The central aims are (1) to assess individual shark well-being and relate it to population health, (2) to standardize methods related to clinical evaluation of shark health for different coastal species, and (3) to relate measures of shark health to ecological variables observed. Applying the lessons learned from laboratory studies of shark immunobiology to programs tagging and non-lethally sampling sharks in the field presents a novel approach to monitoring population fitness. If health can be assessed in the context of ecological interactions, environmental change, and anthropogenic stressors experienced by sharks, then those tools may also be effectively applied to their conservation and management.