Assembly rules of helminth parasite communities in grey mullets: combining components of diversity.

Assembly rules of helminth parasite communities in grey mullets: combining components of diversity. Int J Parasitol. 2020 Aug 01;: Authors: Llopis-Belenguer C, Pavoine S, Blasco-Costa I, Antonio Balbuena J Abstract Organisms aggregate in ecological communities. It has been widely debated whether these associations are explained by deterministic or, in contrast, random processes. The answer may vary, depending on the level of an organisational scale (α, β and γ) and the facet of diversity considered: taxonomic (TD), functional (FD) and phylogenetic (PD). Diversity at the level of a sampling unit (i.e. host individual) is the α diversity; β diversity represents the extent of dissimilarity in diversity among sampling units (within a level of an organisational scale, β1; between levels of an organisational scale, β2); and the total diversity of a system is γ diversity. Thus, the combination of facets and levels of a scale may be useful to disentangle the mechanisms driving the composition of a parasite community. Using helminth parasite TD, FD, and a proxy for PD (PPD) of three species of grey mullets (Teleostei: Mugilidae) from the Mediterranean Sea, we show that random and deterministic processes of different nature explain the assemblage of parasite communities. The parasite community at a host individual (α) was invariably a random subset of the total diversity in the community for the three facets of diversity. At the β1 l...
Source: International Journal for Parasitology - Category: Parasitology Authors: Tags: Int J Parasitol Source Type: research