National Collection of Animal Helminths, Epidemiology, Parasites and Vectors Programme, ARC-Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute, Private Bag X05, Onderstepoort 0110, South Africa.
Department of Veterinary Tropical Diseases, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X04, Onderstepoort 0110, South Africa.
Parasitology. 2023 Sep;150(10):911-921. doi: 10.1017/S0031182023000719. Epub 2023 Aug 9.
Few studies have investigated the ecological interactions between wild species of Suidae and their parasites, leaving our knowledge concerning this host–parasite system fragmented. In the present study, we applied network studies to analyse community nestedness in helminth assemblages of common warthogs, (Gmelin) (Suidae). Helminth data were compiled from 95 warthogs, including young and adult males and females, from 2 different conservation areas in Mpumalanga and Limpopo Provinces, South Africa, collected monthly over a period of 1 year each. The aim was to study the effect of host sex, age and season of sampling on the structure of helminth infracommunities harboured by the warthogs and to search for non-random structural patterns in the warthog–helminth interaction networks. Furthermore, we investigated the influence of a warthog's age, sex and season of sampling on beta diversity and dark diversity of their helminth infracommunities. Lastly, we asked whether the effects of host sex, age and sampling season on helminth communities differed between the 2 localities. We found that helminth communities of warthogs were nested and host–parasite interactions were influenced by all 3 factors as well as combinations thereof. However, the resulting patterns differed at the 2 localities, indicating that local environmental processes are important drivers of community structure.
鲜有研究调查过野猪的野生种与其寄生虫之间的生态相互作用，因此我们对这种宿主-寄生虫系统的了解是零散的。在本研究中，我们应用网络研究方法来分析南非姆普马兰加省和林波波省 2 个不同保护区的普通疣猪（Gmelin）（野猪科）的寄生蠕虫组合的群落嵌套性。我们从 95 头疣猪中收集了寄生虫数据，包括来自不同年龄和性别的雄性和雌性幼猪和成年猪，每月采集一次，持续了 1 年。本研究的目的是研究宿主性别、年龄和采样季节对疣猪寄生蠕虫亚群落结构的影响，并在疣猪-寄生虫相互作用网络中寻找非随机结构模式。此外，我们还研究了疣猪的年龄、性别和采样季节对其寄生蠕虫亚群落的β多样性和暗多样性的影响。最后，我们还询问了宿主性别、年龄和采样季节对寄生虫群落的影响是否在 2 个地点存在差异。我们发现，疣猪的寄生虫群落是嵌套的，宿主-寄生虫相互作用受到所有 3 个因素以及它们的组合的影响。然而，在这 2 个地点的结果模式不同，表明当地的环境过程是群落结构的重要驱动因素。
