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Updated: May 8, 2026

Linking Predation Risk, Herbivore Physiological Stress and Microbial Decomposition of Plant Litter
Published on: March 12, 2013
Trophic structure, stability, and parasite persistence threshold in food webs
C Finn McQuaid1, Nicholas F Britton
1Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK, cfm21@bath.ac.uk.
Abstract:
Food web structure of free-living species is an important determinant of parasite species richness. Downwardly asymmetric predator-prey interactions (where there are more prey than predator species) have been shown, both theoretically and empirically, to harbour more trophically transmitted parasite species than expected due to chance. Here, we demonstrate that this could be due to the increase in the basic reproductive ratio that the addition of non-host prey species to a system creates. However, we note that the basic reproductive ratio is only increased by those prey that stabilise oscillations in a predator-prey system, and is decreased by those that do not.
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