Spickett Andrea, Junker Kerstin, Krasnov Boris R, Haukisalmi Voitto, Matthee Sonja
Agricultural Research Council-Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute, Private Bag X05, Onderstepoort, 0110, South Africa.
Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology, Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland, 7602, South Africa.
Parasitol Res. 2017 Aug;116(8):2299-2312. doi: 10.1007/s00436-017-5538-3. Epub 2017 Jul 1.
To understand the effect of social and spatial behaviour of a host on parasite community organization, we studied species co-occurrence and nestedness of assemblages of gastrointestinal helminths in two closely related rodents, solitary and mobile Rhabdomys dilectus and social and territorially conservative Rhabdomys pumilio, and asked whether helminth communities of the two hosts are characterized by a non-random pattern and whether the occurrence or degree of this non-randomness (a) differs between hosts and (b) is associated with abundance, prevalence and diversity of helminths. We found that although the general pattern of helminth co-occurrence was similar in the two hosts, helminth infracommunities of R. dilectus and R. pumilio differed in the relative frequency of positive and negative pairwise species co-occurrences (only positive in the former and both positive and negative in the latter). Nestedness-related patterns in helminth infracommunities were found in R. pumilio (predominantly anti-nested) but not R. dilectus (predominantly non-nested), whereas the opposite was the case for their component communities (non-nested versus nested, respectively). The level of infection was generally associated with the manifestation of non-randomness in helminth assemblages. Different infection parameters affected different structure patterns in the two hosts. We concluded that community structure of helminths in Rhabdomys spp. results from complex interactions between parasite- and host-associated factors.
为了解宿主的社会行为和空间行为对寄生虫群落组织的影响，我们研究了两种亲缘关系密切的啮齿动物——独居且活动的南非弹鼠（Rhabdomys dilectus）和群居且领地保守的侏儒弹鼠（Rhabdomys pumilio）体内胃肠道蠕虫组合的物种共现和嵌套性，并探讨这两种宿主的蠕虫群落是否具有非随机模式，以及这种非随机模式的出现或程度（a）在宿主之间是否存在差异，（b）是否与蠕虫的丰度、流行率和多样性相关。我们发现，尽管两种宿主中蠕虫共现的总体模式相似，但南非弹鼠和侏儒弹鼠的蠕虫小群落中，正、负成对物种共现的相对频率有所不同（前者只有正共现，后者既有正共现也有负共现）。在侏儒弹鼠的蠕虫小群落中发现了与嵌套性相关的模式（主要为反嵌套），而在南非弹鼠中未发现（主要为非嵌套），而它们的组成群落情况则相反（分别为非嵌套和嵌套）。感染水平通常与蠕虫组合中非随机模式的表现相关。不同的感染参数影响了两种宿主中不同的结构模式。我们得出结论，弹鼠属蠕虫的群落结构是由寄生虫相关因素和宿主相关因素之间的复杂相互作用导致的。
