Do specialist and generalist parasites differ in their prevalence and intensity of infection? A test of the niche breadth and trade-off hypotheses.

Autor: Cebrián-Camisón S; Estación Biológica de Doñana, Departamento de Biología de la Conservación y Cambio Global, Av. Américo Vespucio 26, 41092 Sevilla, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), 28029 Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: sonia.cebrian@ebd.csic.es., la Puente JM; Estación Biológica de Doñana, Departamento de Biología de la Conservación y Cambio Global, Av. Américo Vespucio 26, 41092 Sevilla, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), 28029 Madrid, Spain., Ruiz-López MJ; Estación Biológica de Doñana, Departamento de Biología de la Conservación y Cambio Global, Av. Américo Vespucio 26, 41092 Sevilla, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), 28029 Madrid, Spain., Figuerola J; Estación Biológica de Doñana, Departamento de Biología de la Conservación y Cambio Global, Av. Américo Vespucio 26, 41092 Sevilla, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), 28029 Madrid, Spain.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: International journal for parasitology [Int J Parasitol] 2024 Dec 03. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Dec 03.
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpara.2024.11.009
Abstrakt: Studying host specificity is crucial to understanding the ability of parasites to spread to new hosts and trigger disease emergence events. The relationship between host specificity, and parasite prevalence and infection intensity, has typically been studied in the context of two opposing hypotheses. According to the trade-off hypothesis generalist parasites, which can infect a broad range of hosts, will reach a lower prevalence and infection intensity than more specialist parasites due to the higher costs to adapt to multiple host immune systems. In contrast, the niche breadth hypothesis proposes that generalists' ability to infect more host species makes them more efficient in colonising host communities and thus they are found at higher prevalences and infection intensities. This study aims to test these hypotheses using the widespread avian malaria parasites of the genera Plasmodium and the related malaria-like parasite Haemoproteus. Overall, 1188 wild house sparrows from 17 localities in southwestern Spain were screened for parasite presence and intensity of infection. For each lineage found infecting house sparrows, we estimated host specificity as i) the number of different bird taxa infected by that lineage according to the MalAvi database and ii) an index that accounts for the phylogenetic relatedness between the host species. Parasite infections were recorded in 419 house sparrows, and nine Plasmodium and three Haemoproteus lineages were identified. Prevalence was positively associated with the number of host species. Lineages found in more localities showed both higher prevalence and host range. Overall, these results support the niche breadth hypothesis in relation to blood parasites infecting house sparrows.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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