Fish-parasite interaction networks reveal latitudinal and taxonomic trends in the structure of host-parasite associations.

ABSTRACT: In recent years, treating host–parasite associations as bipartite interaction networks has proven a powerful tool to identify structural patterns and their likely causes in communities of fish and their parasites. Network analysis allows for both community-level properties to be computed and investigated, and species-level roles to be determined. Here, using data from 31 host–parasite interaction networks from local fish communities around the world, we test for latitudinal trends at whole-network level, and taxonomic patterns at individual parasite species level. We found that while controlling for network size (number of species per network), network modularity, or the tendency for the network to be subdivided into groups of species that interact mostly with each other, decreased with in

SUBMITTER: Poulin R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10090588 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature