Trade-Offs with Growth Limit Host Range in Complex Life-Cycle Helminths
| Autor: | James C. Chubb, Geoffrey G. Parker, Kevin D. Lafferty, Daniel P. Benesh |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
0303 health sciences Life Cycle Stages Food Chain Nematoda Host (biology) Ecology Trade offs Biology 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Host Specificity Acanthocephala Host-Parasite Interactions 03 medical and health sciences Paratenic Helminths Animals Cestoda Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Host specificity 030304 developmental biology |
| Zdroj: | The American naturalist. 197(2) |
| ISSN: | 1537-5323 |
| Popis: | Parasitic worms with complex life cycles have several developmental stages, with each stage creating opportunities to infect additional host species. Using a data set for 973 species of trophically transmitted acanthocephalans, cestodes, and nematodes, we confirmed that worms with longer life cycles (i.e., more successive hosts) infect a greater diversity of host species and taxa (after controlling for study effort). Generalism at the stage level was highest for middle life stages, the second and third intermediate hosts of long life cycles. By simulating life cycles in real food webs, we found that middle stages had more potential host species to infect, suggesting that opportunity constrains generalism. However, parasites usually infected fewer host species than expected from simulated cycles, suggesting that generalism has costs. There was no trade-off in generalism from one stage to the next, but worms spent less time growing and developing in stages where they infected more taxonomically diverse hosts. Our results demonstrate that life-cycle complexity favors high generalism and that host use across life stages is determined by both ecological opportunity and life-history trade-offs. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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