Albrecht Schulte-Hostedde

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Laurentian University

The 2021 discovery of a divergent lineage (B.1.641) of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in white-tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus ) from Ontario raised concerns that deer were a potential reservoir. To assess whether white-tailed deer continued to be infected with B.1.641 and to test for spillover into other species,...

Parasite species interactions, host biology traits, and external environmental factors can drive co-occurrence patterns between parasite species. We investigated co-occurrence patterns between three ectoparasite species (mite (Neotrombicula harperi), and fleas (Orchopeas caedens and Ceratophyllus vison)) of North American red squirrels (Tamiasciuru...

Conservation breeding programmes include translocations of animals across breeding facilities, both in and ex situ, and to/from their natural habitat. Newly reintroduced Vancouver Island marmots (VIMs) originating from the captive breeding programme are known to experience high winter mortality once reintroduced. Whilst high winter mortality rates...

Urban environments offer wildlife a consistent supply of anthropogenic food waste, divergent from natural food sources in nutrient composition. This study investigates the dietary impact of urbanization on eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus (Linnaeus, 1758)) by analyzing stable isotope signatures (∂13C and ∂15N) in their hair. The hypothesis posits...

Urbanization is one of the most significant contributors to the Anthropocene, and urban evolutionary ecology has become an important field of research. While it is commonly assumed that cities impose new and stronger selection, the contradictory assertion that selection may be relaxed in cities is also frequently mentioned, and overall, our underst...

Male and female rodents experience different selective pressures associated with reproductive costs. Thus, we may expect the expression of different Pace-of-life (POL) strategies between sexes. Further, the pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) hypothesis and anisogamy predict differences in the costs of gamete production, where variation in life history tr...

There has been an increasing interest in modelling the influence of animal personality on species interactions within ecosystems. Animal personality traits associated with dispersal, movement within a home range and risk-taking, including docility and exploration, have been shown to influence an array of environmental variables including seed dispe...

Urban spaces offer both benefits (elevated food resources from human food sources and fewer predators) and energetic costs (the physiological stress response related to human activity) to wildlife. We investigated whether chipmunks (Tamias striatus) experienced variation in fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGMs) and body condition across an urbani...

Conservation breeding programs typically involve the management of individuals both in and ex situ, so it is vital to understand how the physiology of managed species changes in these environments to maximize program outcomes. The Vancouver Island marmot (VIM; Marmota vancouverensis) is one species that has been managed in a conservation breeding p...

Quantitatively evaluating and monitoring augmentation efforts are critical for conservation success. We formally evaluated the success of two Western Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia hypugaea) population augmentation programs in Manitoba and British Columbia by assessing survival of breeding adults, fledging success, and return rates of fledglings...

The One Health framework links animal, human, and environmental health, and focuses on emerging zoonotic pathogens. Understanding the interface between wildlife and human activity is critical due to the unpredictable nature of spillover of zoonotic pathogens from animals to humans. Zoos are important partners in One Health because of their contribu...

One of the threats that the critically endangered European mink (Mustela lutreola) faces throughout its relict range, including the occidental population, is the impact of the American mink (Mustela vison) invasion in its natural habitat. We aimed to explore the differences in microbiota and genetic diversity between European and American mink to t...

Deer mice ( Peromyscus maniculatus ) are hosts to ixodid ticks as well as the associated tick-borne pathogens they can spread. As the ranges of black-legged ticks ( Ixodes scapularis ) and American dog ticks ( Dermacentor variabilis ) expand northwards, naïve host populations of deer mice are likely to become infested by ticks and experience the ph...

Ectoparasites are fundamental to ecosystems, playing a key role in trophic regulation. Fleas, mites, and ticks are common hematophagous ectoparasites that infest shared mammalian hosts. One common host in Ontario, Canada, is the deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus). As the climate warms and the geographic ranges of blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapular...

A common response to parasite infestations is increased production of glucocorticoid hormones that regulate immune function. We examined relationships between ectoparasite infestations and fecal corticosterone metabolites (FCM) in deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus). Furthermore, we experimentally removed fleas to determine if reductions in ectopara...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.ijppaw.2020.04.011.].

Background Guinea worm–Dracunculus medinensis–was historically one of the major parasites of humans and has been known since antiquity. Now, Guinea worm is on the brink of eradication, as efforts to interrupt transmission have reduced the annual burden of disease from millions of infections per year in the 1980s to only 54 human cases reported glob...

The release of domestic organisms to the wild threatens biodiversity because the introduction of domestic genes through interbreeding can negatively impact wild conspecifics via outbreeding depression. In North America, farmed American mink (Neovison vison) frequently escape captivity, yet the impact of these events on functional genetic diversity...

With the widespread loss of biodiversity, zoos and aquariums are striving to become leaders in biodiversity conservation and research. Canada’s Accredited Zoos and Aquariums (CAZA) is a nonprofit organization created to represent its members, including as agencies of conservation and science. However, the contribution of CAZA members to conservatio...

Hosts are often infested by multiple parasite species, but it is often unclear whether patterns of parasite co-occurrence are driven by parasite habitat requirements or parasite species interactions. Using data on infestation patterns of ectoparasitic arthropods (fleas, trombiculid mites, cuterebrid botflies) from deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus)...

Microbes can have important impacts on their host's survival. Captive breeding programs for endangered species include periods of captivity that can ultimately have an impact on reintroduction success. No study to date has investigated the impacts of captive diet on the gut microbiota during the relocation process of generalist species. This study...

The first Science Meets Parliament event in Canada was held in November 2018 in Ottawa, where twenty-eight Tier II Canada Research Chairs (a specific class of Canadian university professor acknowledged by their peers as having the potential to lead in their field) from diverse disciplines met with forty-three Members of Canadian Parliament and Sena...

The first Science Meets Parliament event in Canada was held in November 2018 in Ottawa, where twenty-eight Tier II Canada Research Chairs (a specific class of Canadian university professor acknowledged by their peers as having the potential to lead in their field) from diverse disciplines met with forty-three Members of Canadian Parliament and Sena...

Background: Guinea worm - Dracunculus medinensis - was historically one of the major parasites of humans and has been known since antiquity. Now, Guinea worm is on the brink of eradication, as efforts to interrupt transmission have reduced the annual burden of disease from millions of infections per year in the 1980s to only 30 human cases reported...

Parasitic infections can cause restricted growth, reduced reproductive function, offspring quality, and increased mortality, which has been observed in different bird species.

Vertebrate gastrointestinal tracts have co-existed with microbes over millennia. These microbial communities provide their host with numerous benefits. However, the extent to which different environmental factors contribute to the assemblage of gut microbial communities is not fully understood. The purpose of this study was to determine how the ext...

Hair cortisol analysis has been used to quantify hormone levels in circulation in several mammal species. Hair remains stable for decades or centuries, allowing researchers to use archived hair samples to investigate hormone levels that span long time periods. However, several studies have found that intra-individual variability, driven by the body...

Urban landscapes have well-known effects on wildlife populations. Many species of urban wildlife feed on anthropogenic food wastes, and little is known regarding the sub-lethal physiological consequences of this novel diet. We use samples from three populations of raccoons to test the hypothesis that access to anthropogenic food waste will lead to...

Cities are rapidly expanding, and wildlife may experience different selection pressures in urban environments when compared to natural habitats. Phenotypic differences between urban and natural populations may occur because of the altered urban environment. Behavior, the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and body condition c...

Microbial communities are increasingly being recognized as important to host health in wild mammals, but how these communities are characterized can have important consequences on the results of these studies. Previous research has explored temporal variation in microbial communities in humans and lab mammals, but few have investigated how microbio...

Captive breeding is used for the conservation of endangered species, but inbreeding can result when a small number of founders are used to establish populations. Inbreeding can reduce the proportion of normal sperm in an ejaculate, but may also have effects on sperm size and shape (morphometry). We investigated the effects of inbreeding on sperm mo...

Farmed American mink (Neovison vison (Schreber, 1777)) pose a risk to biodiversity owing to escape and release from farms. Feral mink may affect native species in locations where American mink are not endemic, such as Europe. In contrast, escaping domestic mink may hybridize with wild mink in North America, leading to introgression of domestic trai...

Here we identify, for the first time, a generalist orange parasitic mite found on multiple small-mammal species in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. Results from 18S rRNA sequencing suggest that these mites may belong to the family Trombiculidae (Acari: Trombidiformes), although morphological and additional genetic analyses are needed to...

Bacterial diversity within animals is emerging as an essential component of health, but it is unknown how stress may influence the microbiome. We quantify a proximate link between the oral microbiome and hypothalamic- pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity using faecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGM) in wild red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus)....

Like other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, ecological research needs ethics. Given the rapid pace of technological developments and social change, it is important for scientists to have the vocabulary and critical-thinking skills necessary to identify, analyze, and communicate the ethical issues generated by the research a...

Table S1. Website: Association of Zoos and Aquariums/Animal Care & Management/Animal Programs.

Both natural animal populations and those in captivity are subject to evolutionary forces. Evolutionary changes to captive populations may be an important, but poorly understood, factor that can affect the sustainability of these populations. The importance of maintaining the evolutionary integrity of zoo populations, especially those that are used...

Aleutian mink disease virus (AMDV) causes a parvovirus infection, initially characterized in American mink (Neovison vison), that may have harmful effects on wild populations of susceptible animals. In North America, where American mink are native, the origin, host range, and prevalence of AMDV in wild species is not clear. We studied striped skunk...

In this study, we explored variation in sperm morphometry of the African cyprinid Barbus neumayeri Fischer, 1884 (Neumayer’s barb) across seven sites with a wide range in dissolved oxygen, from hypoxic swamps to intermittent normoxic streams to well-oxygenated rivers. We explore whether fish physiological condition (K) or hypoxia can affect the rep...

Stress levels of individuals are documented using glucocorticoid concentrations (including cortisol) in blood, saliva, urine or faeces, which provide information about stress hormones during a short period of time (minutes to days). In mammals, use of hair cortisol analysis allows for the assessment of prolonged stress over weeks and months and pro...

We argue that the ecological research community should develop a plan for improving the ethical consistency and moral robustness of the field. We propose a particular ethics strategy-specifically, an ongoing process of collective ethical reflection that the community of ecological researchers, with the cooperation of applied ethicists and philosoph...

Best practices in wildlife disease management require robust evolutionary ecological research (EER). This means not only basing management decisions on evolutionarily sound reasoning, but also conducting management in a way that actively contributes to the on-going development of that research. Because good management requires good science, and goo...

Abstract Aleutian mink disease virus (AMDV) occurs in the American mink (Neovison vison) in wild populations and on mink farms and can cause illness and death. The North American river otter (Lontra canadensis) may be exposed to AMDV because of shared space and habitat with mink. Using serology and real-time PCR, we tested river otters across Ontar...

Wolbachia endosymbionts are a proven target for control of human disease caused by filarial nematodes. However, little is known about the occurrence of Wolbachia in taxa closely related to the superfamily Filarioidea. Our study addressed the status of Wolbachia presence in members of the superfamily Dracunculoidea by screening the human parasite Dr...

Across mating systems, females differ in the amount of resources they invest in offspring. For example, polyandrous females invest in acquiring multiple matings rather than providing parental care. We examined how the amount of maternal immune investment, measured as immunoglobulin Y and lysozyme activity in eggs, was influenced by female role acro...

Wild carnivores in zoos, conservation breeding centres, and farms commonly live in relatively small, unstimulating enclosures. Under these captive conditions, in a range of species including giant pandas, black-footed ferrets, and European mink, male reproductive abilities are often poor. Such problems have long been hypothesized to be caused by th...

In heterogeneous landscapes, physical barriers and loss of structural connectivity have been shown to reduce gene flow and therefore lead to population structuring. In this study, we assessed the influence of landscape features on population genetic structure and gene flow of a semiaquatic species, the muskrat. A total of 97 muskrats were sampled f...

Control of invasions is facilitated by their early detection, but this may be difficult when invasions are cryptic due to similarity between invaders and native species. Domesticated conspecifics offer an interesting example of cryptic invasions because they have the ability to hybridize with their native counterparts, and can thus facilitate the i...

Objectives This review aims to demonstrate the utility of integrating the insights of evolutionary psychology with sport and exercise psychology. Specifically, we offer a primer on evolutionary psychology that we then discuss in the context of several research avenues in sport and exercise. Next, we discuss how evolutionary psychology can inform ou...

In heterogeneous landscapes, physical barriers and loss of structural connectivity have been shown to reduce gene flow and therefore lead to population structur-ing. In this study, we assessed the influence of landscape features on population genetic structure and gene flow of a semiaquatic species, the muskrat. A total of 97 muskrats were sampled...

The immune system is considered to be an energetically expensive component of an individual's life history. Investment in the immune system can depend on the environment that an individual finds itself in. The American mink, Neovison vison, exists in the natural environment and on fur farms. The natural environment and mink farm differ in many ways...

Aleutian mink disease (AMD) is a prominent infectious disease in mink farms. The AMD virus (AMDV) has been well characterized in Europe where American mink (Neovison vison) are an introduced species; however, in North America, where American mink are native and the disease is thought to have originated, the virus’ molecular epidemiology is unknown....

Zoonotic diseases impact both wild and domestic animal populations and can be transmitted to humans through close contact with animal species. Reservoir species acting as vectors are major traffickers of disease. Rodents contribute to the transmission of Coxiella burnetii although little is known about its prevalence in wild animal populations. DNA...

Environmental pressures present during critical periods in fetal development can have a strong influence on the long-term fitness of an individual. Susceptibility to parasites, immune function, and future reproductive success are all vulnerable to stressful events in utero. The causes and consequences of prenatal environmental stress are often diff...

Sport provides a context in which mate choice can be facilitated by the display of athletic prowess. Previous work has shown that, for females, team sport athletes are more desirable as mates than individual sport athletes and non-participants. In the present study, the perceptions of males and females were examined regarding potential mates based...

Genitalia are among the most variable of morphological traits, and recent research suggests that this variability may be the result of sexual selection. For example, large bacula may undergo post-copulatory selection by females as a signal of male size and age. This should lead to positive allometry in baculum size. In addition to hyperallometry, s...

Sentinel species are important tools for studies of biodiversity and environmental health. The American mink (Neovison vison) has long been considered a sentinel of environmental contamination, since the species is known to be sensitive to a number of common contaminants, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) and mercury. Mink may not always sa...

Life-history theory predicts that all organisms have finite energy reserves. In order to optimize fitness, individuals must make trade-offs in allocating energy among survival, growth, and reproduction. Parasites have the ability to negatively impact host fitness and shift the balance of energy trade-offs. The aim of our study was to determine the...

Extrinsic factors such as physical barriers play an important role in shaping population genetic structure. A reduction in gene flow leading to population structuring may ultimately lead to population divergence. These divergent populations are often considered subspecies. Because genetic differentiation may represent differences between subspecies...

Infectious diseases can often be of conservation importance for wildlife. Spillover, when infectious disease is transmitted from a reservoir population to sympatric wildlife, is a particular threat. American mink (Neovison vison) populations across Canada appear to be declining, but factors thus far explored have not fully explained this population...

An individual’s fitness is estimated by its lifetime reproductive success. In the polygynandrous sciurid mating system, male reproductive success is determined by an individual’s success in locating and defending receptive females. Personality traits are differences in behavioural reactions that are heritable, consistent across contexts and over ti...

Theoretical models predict that individual males will increase their investment in ejaculates when there is a risk of sperm competition. Because the production of ejaculates is assumed to be energetically costly, only those males in good physical condition should be capable of producing ejaculates of high quality. We studied ejaculate investment (r...

Allometry of secondary sexual traits has been the subject of recent debate, and the generality of positive allometry and its association with sexual selection have been recently questioned. Whereas some studies suggest an almost universal positive allometry for traits under sexual selection and isometry or a negative allometry for traits not under...

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Sperm competition results in the evolution of ejaculate characteristics such as high sperm density, high motility, and fast sperm swimming speed. A fundamental assumption of sperm competition theory is that ejaculates with high motility and fast-swimming sperm have an advantage with respect to fertilization success. We tested this assumption by stu...

Using an enclosure experiment, we tested whether substrate selection by deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), redback voles (Clethrionomys gapperi), and woodland jumping mice (Napaeozapus insignis) matched habitat-use patterns determined from trapping data. Mice were introduced into a 5 m diameter enclosure containing substrates from three habitats:...

The importance of hybridization in animal evolution has become controversial. Gene flow between divergent taxa can strongly influence processes of great interest to evolutionary biologists, such as speciation and adaptation. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) introgression is a commonly observed, yet particularly poorly understood consequence of hybridizati...

Developmental instability, measured as fluctuating asymmetry (FA), is often used as a tool to measure stress and the overall quality of organisms. Under FA, it is assumed that control of symmetry during development is costly and that under stress the trajectory of development is disturbed, resulting in asymmetric morphologies. Amphibian emergent in...

In a recent review paper, Basu et al. [Basu, N., Scheuhammer, A.M., Bursian, S.J., Elliott, J., Rouvinen-Watt, K., Chan, H.M., 2007. Mink as a sentinel species in environmental health. Environ. Res. 103, 130-144] suggested that the American mink (formerly Mustela vison, now Neovison vison) should be used as a sentinel species for studies of the eff...

Dracunculus insignis is a nematode parasite that infects the subcutaneous tissues of mammals such as raccoon (Procyon lotor), mink (Neovison vison) and fisher (Martes pennanti). D. lutrae, a morphologically similar species, has only been recovered from the otter (Lontra canadensis). Species identification of these two North American guinea worms ha...

Sperm competition is widespread in mammals and occurs when ejaculates from two or more males compete within the female’s reproductive tract to fertilize the ova. Enlarged testes are associated with sperm competition because they produce sperm, but the accessory glands produce fluids and proteins that are also important for fertilization success. Sp...

Sexual selection is a powerful force that influences the evolution of a variety of traits associated with female mate choice and male–male competition. Although other factors have been implicated, sexual selection may be particularly important in the evolution of the genitalia. Traits under sexual selection typically have high phenotypic variance a...

The release of domesticated organisms into natural populations may adversely affect these populations through predation, resource competition, and the introduction of disease. Additionally, the potential for hybridization between wild and domestic conspecifics is of great concern because it can alter the evolutionary integrity of the affected popul...

Secondary sexual characteristics are often under intense sexual selection as ornaments for attracting mates or as traits associated with male-male competition such as combat. Secondary sexual traits under sexual selection are predicted to be related to male phenotype, because only high-quality males should be capable of developing these costly and...

We describe the isolation and characterization of 12 highly polymorphic microsatellite loci for the muskrat, Ondatra zibethicus. Microsatellite markers from three other rodent species were cross-amplified in muskrat and one of them was polymorphic. We observed moderate to high levels of genetic variability in these 13 polymorphic loci (five to 22 a...

Secondary sexual characteristics are often under intense sexual selection as ornaments for attracting mates or as traits associated with male-male competition such as combat. Secondary sexual traits under sexual selection are predicted to be related to male phenotype, because only high-quality males should be capable of developing these costly and...

The influence of predation risk on microhabitat selection in male adult deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) was examined using an enclosure experiment. The relative amount of time spent by the deer mice on coniferous leaf litter, hardwood leaf litter and logs was measured. Mice preferred dry coniferous litter over dry hardwood litter, but had no pre...

Les larves d'acariens aquatiques parasitent une variété d'insectes aquatiques et peuvent avoir un impact négatif sur la valeur adaptative de l'hôte. Nous avons ici évalué si le parasitisme par les acariens est relié au sexe et à la condition physique chez le gyrin Dineutus nigrior (Coleoptera : Gyrinidae), un hôte chez qui le parasitisme par les ac...

Larval water mites parasitise a wide range of aquatic insects and may have a negative impact on host fitness. One host taxon susceptible to water mite parasitism is the whirligig beetle (Coleoptera: Gyrinidae). We made 11 collections of the whirligig beetle Dineutus nigrior Roberts from May to October of 2006 to investigate patterns of water mite p...

The body condition of an animal reflects its energetic state such that an animal in good condition has greater energy reserves than one that is in poor condition. Body condition in turn should be positively correlated with fitness because energetic reserves limit the amount of energy that can be allocated to reproduction. Using Spotted Turtles (Cle...

Parasites use their hosts for nutrition, shelter, and even dispersal the latter can result in sex-biased parasite distribution. Host sex-biased parasitism has been well documented in vertebrates, including mammals, and males are often more parasitized than females. Male-biased parasitism is often attributed to sexual size dimorphism, with larger an...

Sexual selection theory argues that females invest more heavily in reproduction than males and thus tend to be choosier in terms of mate choice. Sport may provide a context within which females can gain information about male quality to inform this choice. Males may be able to display attractive traits such as athleticism, strength, and physique to...

Relationships between indices of condition and measures of proximate body composition were examined among and within nine populations of mature walleyes Sander vitreus that varied widely in growth rate and lipid status. Body condition, measured as the residuals from mass versus length regressions, was negatively related to mean water content and po...

Invasive feral American mink (Neovison vison) have had well-documented impacts in Europe and South America. We tested the hypotheses that escape of ranch-raised mink is also common in Canada where the species is endemic, and that declines of Canadian wild mink apparent from harvest data are related to mink ranching. Consistent with these hypotheses...

Sexual size and shape dimorphism was quantified in the whirligig beetle Dineutus nigrior Roberts. Females were larger in terms of body length, elytra length, body height, profemur width, and mass. Males had longer heads, longer and wider protarsi, longer and wider protibiae, and longer profemora. Discriminant function analysis identified 80.5% of i...

Sexual selection is a potent force in the evolution of morphology in sexually reproducing species. When large size in a trait is favored by sexual selection the trait often exhibits positive allometry. Mating behavior in whirligig beetles consists of males attempting to grasp reluctant females using enlarged protarsi (protarsal pads). Here we use a...