Does moving up a food chain increase aggregation in parasites?

General laws in ecological parasitology are scarce. Here, we evaluate data on numbers of fish parasites published by over 200 authors to determine whether acquiring parasites via prey is associated with an increase in parasite aggregation. Parasite species were grouped taxonomically to produce 20 or...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of the Royal Society interface Vol. 13; no. 118; p. 20160102
Main Authors Lester, R. J. G., McVinish, R.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England The Royal Society 01.05.2016
Subjects
Acanthocephala
Animals
Fish
Fishes - parasitology
Food Chain
Independent Increment Process
Index Of Dispersion
Life Sciences–Mathematics interface
Models, Biological
Monogenea
Parasites
Taylor's Power Law
Taylor's power law
Monogenea
Acanthocephala
index of dispersion
fish
independent increment process
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Summary:General laws in ecological parasitology are scarce. Here, we evaluate data on numbers of fish parasites published by over 200 authors to determine whether acquiring parasites via prey is associated with an increase in parasite aggregation. Parasite species were grouped taxonomically to produce 20 or more data points per group as far as possible. Most parasites that remained at one trophic level were less aggregated than those that had passed up a food chain. We use a stochastic model to show that high parasite aggregation in predators can be solely the result of the accumulation of parasites in their prey. The model is further developed to show that a change in the predators feeding behaviour with age may further increase parasite aggregation.
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SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:1742-5689
1742-5662
DOI:10.1098/rsif.2016.0102