Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Biología, Laboratorio de Helmintología, México D. F., México.
PLoS One. 2013;8(1):e54787. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0054787. Epub 2013 Jan 24.
In order to draw patterns in helminth parasite composition and species richness in Mexican freshwater fishes we analyse a presence-absence matrix representing every species of adult helminth parasites of freshwater fishes from 23 Mexican hydrological basins. We examine the distributional patterns of the helminth parasites with regard to the main hydrological basins of the country, and in doing so we identify areas of high diversity and point out the biotic similarities and differences among drainage basins. Our dataset allows us to evaluate the relationships among drainage basins in terms of helminth diversity. This paper shows that the helminth fauna of freshwater fishes of Mexico can characterise hydrological basins the same way as fish families do, and that the basins of south-eastern Mexico are home to a rich, predominantly Neotropical, helminth fauna whereas the basins of the Mexican Highland Plateau and the Nearctic area of Mexico harbour a less diverse Nearctic fauna, following the same pattern of distribution of their fish host families. The composition of the helminth fauna of each particular basin depends on the structure of the fish community rather than on the limnological characteristics and geographical position of the basin itself. This work shows distance decay of similarity and a clear linkage between host and parasite distributions.
为了描绘墨西哥淡水鱼类中寄生虫组成和物种丰富度的模式，我们分析了一个存在-缺失矩阵，该矩阵代表了来自 23 个墨西哥水文流域的每一种淡水鱼类的成年寄生虫。我们研究了寄生虫的分布模式与该国主要水文流域的关系，并在这样做的过程中确定了高多样性区域，并指出了流域之间的生物相似性和差异。我们的数据集使我们能够根据寄生虫多样性来评估流域之间的关系。本文表明，墨西哥淡水鱼类的寄生虫区系可以像鱼类科一样来描述水文流域，而墨西哥东南部的流域拥有丰富的、主要是新热带的寄生虫区系，而墨西哥高原和墨西哥近北极地区的流域则拥有较少的近北极寄生虫区系，其鱼类宿主科的分布模式相同。每个特定流域的寄生虫区系组成取决于鱼类群落的结构，而不是流域本身的水文学特征和地理位置。这项工作表明相似性的距离衰减和宿主与寄生虫分布之间的明确联系。
