Do predators keep prey healthy or make them sicker? A meta‐analysis

Ecological theory suggests that predators can either keep prey populations healthy by reducing parasite burdens or alternatively, increase parasitism in prey. To quantify the overall magnitude and direction of the effect of predation on parasitism in prey observed in practice, we conducted a meta‐an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEcology letters Vol. 25; no. 2; pp. 278 - 294
Main Authors Richards, Robert L., Drake, John M., Ezenwa, Vanessa O., Lafferty, Kevin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.02.2022
Subjects
Animals
disease ecology
Ecosystem
Empirical analysis
Food Chain
healthy herds hypothesis
Life cycles
Meta-analysis
parasite
Parasites
Parasitism
Predation
predator
Predators
Predatory Behavior
Prey
trophic interaction
meta-analysis
parasite
disease ecology
trophic interaction
predator
healthy herds hypothesis
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Summary:Ecological theory suggests that predators can either keep prey populations healthy by reducing parasite burdens or alternatively, increase parasitism in prey. To quantify the overall magnitude and direction of the effect of predation on parasitism in prey observed in practice, we conducted a meta‐analysis of 47 empirical studies. We also examined how study attributes, including parasite type and life cycle, habitat type, study design, and whether predators were able to directly consume prey contributed to variation in the predator‐prey‐parasite interaction. We found that the overall effect of predation on parasitism differed between parasites and parasitoids and that whether consumptive effects were present, and whether a predator was a non‐host spreader of parasites, were the most important traits predicting the parasite response. Our results suggest that the mechanistic basis of predator‐prey interactions strongly influences the effects of predators on parasites and that these effects, although context dependent, are predictable. Ecological theory suggests that predators should keep prey populations healthy by reducing parasite burdens. We conducted a meta‐analysis to test this hypothesis. We found that the effect of predators on parasite in prey depended on the type of predator interaction differed between parasites and parasitoids.
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ISSN:1461-023X
1461-0248
DOI:10.1111/ele.13919