Genetic, ecological and geographic covariables explaining host range and specificity of a microsporidian parasite

Parasites often have a smaller geographic distribution than their hosts. Common garden infection trials can untangle the role that historical contingencies, ecological conditions and the genetic constitution of local host populations play in limiting parasite geographic range; however, infection trials usually overestimate the range of hosts in which a parasite could naturally persist. This study overcomes that problem by using multigeneration, long-term persistence experiments. We study the microsporidian parasite Hamiltosporidium tvaerminnensis in monoclonal populations of Daphnia magna from 43 widely spread sites. The parasite persisted well in hosts collected from its natural geographic range, but demonstrated long-term persistence in only a few host genotypes outside this range. Genetic distance between hosts from the parasite's origin site and newly tested host populations correlated negatively with parasite persistence. Furthermore, the parasite persisted only in host populations from habitats with a high likelihood of drying up in summer, although we excluded environmental variation in our experiments. Together, our results suggest that host genetic factors play the dominant role in explaining the limited geographic range of parasites and that these genetic differences covary with geographic distance and the habitat type the host is adapted to.