Community composition is driven by a few key assembly processes: ecological selection, drift and dispersal. Nested parasite communities represent a powerful study system for understanding the relative importance of these processes and their relationship with biological scale. Quantifying To examine factors driving parasite community composition, we quantified the parasite communities of 959 amphibian hosts representing two species (the Pacific chorus frog, Differences among ponds comprised the majority (40%) of regional parasite diversity, followed by differences among host species (23%) and among host individuals (12%). Host species supported parasite communities that were less similar than expected by null models, consistent with ecological selection, although these differences lessened through time, likely due to high dispersal rates of infectious stages. Host individuals within the same population supported more similar parasite communities than expected, suggesting that host heterogeneity did not strongly impact parasite community composition and that dispersal was high at the individual host-level. Despite the small population sizes of within‐host parasite communities, drift appeared to play a minimal role in structuring community composition. Dispersal and ecological selection appear to jointly drive parasite community assembly, particularly at larger biological scales. The dispersal ability of aquatic parasites with complex life cycles differs strongly across scales, meaning that parasite communities may predictably converge at small scales where dispersal is high, but may be more stochastic and unpredictable at larger scales. Insights into assembly mechanisms within multi‐host, multi‐parasite systems provide opportunities for understanding how to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases within human and wildlife hosts.
- Award ID(s):
- 1829509
- PAR ID:
- 10353807
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Parasitology
- Volume:
- 149
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 0031-1820
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 786 to 798
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031182022000233
