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Modelling climatic suitability for myrtle rust with a widespread host species

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Abstract

Globalisation has resulted in the spread of infectious plant diseases to new regions and host species and the novel disease caused by myrtle rust poses a global threat to naïve hosts in the Myrtaceae family of plants. This study uses a focal species, Tristaniopsis exiliflora, to explore the climatic and microclimatic preference of the myrtle rust disease (Austropuccinia psidii). Populations of T. exiliflora were sampled across the species distribution in Far North Queensland, Australia, modelling A. psidii severity as a function of macro- and micro-environmental variables. Disease severity was found to increase with annual precipitation and foliage projective cover, and decrease with maximum temperature and valley confinement. A subsampled population found that individuals with lower canopy heights experienced more severe disease. Our results suggest that, in tropical environments with seasonal rainfall, A. psidii virulence is reduced when mean annual rainfall is less than 1500 mm and virulence is substantially reduced when maximum temperatures exceed 32 °C. The climatic drivers identified in this study align with optimal in vitro conditions for A. psidii germination and development. This suggests that climatic conditions are regulating myrtle rust in natural ecosystems at a broader scale, and that increased conservation efforts should focus on species with narrow climatic distributions and highly susceptible regions such as the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.

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Data availability

Site information and myrtle rust disease data is available upon request from the NESP Threatened Species Recovery Hub national myrtle rust database. A source table for all environmental spatial layers is included in Online Resource 1. The custom code used for all analyses in this manuscript can be provided by the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Anna Pintor for providing the environmental layers used in creating the cross-population model, Teghan Collingwood, Boris Laffineur, and Gretel Waugh for supporting the synthesis of the paper, as well as David George and Jarrah Wills for contributing photographs for the submission. This study was supported by funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme through the Threatened Species Recovery Hub National.

Funding

This study was supported by funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme through the Threatened Species Recovery Hub National.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Natalie A. Meiklejohn, Timothy L. Staples & Rod J. Fensham

  2. Department of Environment and Science, Queensland Herbarium, Mt Coot-Tha Road, Toowong, QLD, 4066, Australia

    Rod J. Fensham

Authors
  1. Natalie A. Meiklejohn
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  2. Timothy L. Staples
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  3. Rod J. Fensham
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Contributions

Study conception and design was conceived by NM and RF. Data collection was performed by NM. The data was analysed by NM and TS. The first draft of the manuscript was written by NM and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Natalie A. Meiklejohn.

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Meiklejohn, N.A., Staples, T.L. & Fensham, R.J. Modelling climatic suitability for myrtle rust with a widespread host species. Biol Invasions 24, 831–844 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-021-02689-z

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