Survival, viral load and neutralizing antibodies in steelhead trout and cell cultures exposed to infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) at 3 temperatures

Environmental variation has important effects on host-pathogen interactions, affecting large-scale ecological processes such as the severity and frequency of epidemics. However, less is known about how the environment modulates viral fitness traits and within host infection processes. Viral genetic variation, fish host immune response and environmental parameters such as temperature have been reported to strongly influence the replication and clearance of infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV), a significant pathogen of salmon and trout. Here, we quantified the effect of water temperature on probability of infection across time following exposure of steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) to a field isolate of IHNV. Warm water temperatures [...]