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Oral Bacterial Infection and Shedding in Drosophila melanogaster

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Published on: May 31, 2018

High intervality explained by phylogenetic constraints in host-parasite webs.

David Mouillot¹, Boris R Krasnov, Robert Poulin

¹UMR CNRS-UM2-IFREMER 5119 Ecosystemes Lagunaires, University of Montpellier 2, CC093, 34095 Montpellier, Cedex 5, France. mouillot@univ-montp2.fr

|August 19, 2008

Summary

Ecological webs show strong patterns of intervality, where parasite diets are contiguous along the host spectrum. Phylogenetic constraints, especially at the family level, significantly drive these observed web structures and intervality.

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Network Theory
Parasitology

Background:

Invariant structures in species interaction webs are crucial for ecological understanding.
Elucidating the processes governing universal web patterns remains a significant challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

To quantify the intervality of host-parasite webs.
To challenge the notion of invariant structures emerging in host-parasite webs.
To investigate the role of phylogenetic constraints in shaping web structure.

Main Methods:

Quantified intervality in fish-metazoan and mammal-flea webs.
Employed a null model of random host-parasite links.
Utilized a null model incorporating phylogenetic constraints.

Main Results:

Empirical host-parasite webs show a significant bias toward intervality (contiguous parasite diets).
Null models with phylogenetic constraints closely mirrored empirical web structures.
Phylogenetic constraints at the family level strongly influenced web similarity.

Conclusions:

Host-parasite webs exhibit strong intervality, likely driven by phylogenetic constraints.
A novel, standardized measure of intervality was proposed, independent of web size or connectance.
This measure can serve as a surrogate for web maturity or saturation.