Lilly Hall of Life Sciences, Purdue University, 915 Mitch Daniels Blvd, West Lafayette, Indiana, 47907, USA.
Nat Commun. 2024 Jun 26;15(1):5431. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-49515-3.
Multi-host parasites pose greater health risks to wildlife, livestock, and humans than single-host parasites, yet our understanding of how ecological and biological factors influence a parasite's host range remains limited. Here, we assemble the largest and most complete dataset on permanently parasitic mammalian mites and build a predictive model assessing the probability of single-host parasites to become multi-hosts, while accounting for potentially unobserved host-parasite links and class imbalance. This model identifies statistically significant predictors related to parasites, hosts, climate, and habitat disturbance. The most important predictors include the parasite's contact level with the host immune system and two variables characterizing host phylogenetic similarity and spatial co-distribution. Our model reveals an overrepresentation of mites associated with Rodentia (rodents), Chiroptera (bats), and Carnivora in the multi-host risk group. This highlights both the potential vulnerability of these hosts to parasitic infestations and the risk of serving as reservoirs of parasites for new hosts. In addition, we find independent macroevolutionary evidence that supports our prediction of several single-host species of Notoedres, the bat skin parasites, to be in the multi-host risk group, demonstrating the forecasting potential of our model.
多宿主寄生虫比单宿主寄生虫对野生动物、家畜和人类的健康构成更大的威胁，但我们对生态和生物因素如何影响寄生虫的宿主范围的理解仍然有限。在这里，我们收集了最大和最完整的永久性寄生哺乳动物螨数据集，并构建了一个预测模型，评估单宿主寄生虫成为多宿主的可能性，同时考虑到潜在的未观察到的宿主-寄生虫联系和类别不平衡。该模型确定了与寄生虫、宿主、气候和栖息地干扰相关的具有统计学意义的重要预测因子。最重要的预测因子包括寄生虫与宿主免疫系统的接触程度以及两个描述宿主系统发育相似性和空间共分布的变量。我们的模型显示，与啮齿目（老鼠）、翼手目（蝙蝠）和食肉目（食肉动物）相关的螨虫在多宿主风险组中过度表达。这既突出了这些宿主容易受到寄生虫感染的潜在脆弱性，也突出了它们作为新宿主寄生虫储存库的风险。此外，我们还发现了独立的宏观进化证据，支持我们对几种单宿主物种的预测，即蝙蝠皮肤寄生虫 Notoedres 处于多宿主风险组，这证明了我们模型的预测潜力。
