Host density drives the postglacial migration of the tree parasite, Epifagus virginiana.

ABSTRACT: To survive changes in climate, successful species shift their geographic ranges to remain in suitable habitats. For parasites and other highly specialized species, distributional changes not only are dictated by climate but can also be engineered by their hosts. The extent of host control on parasite range expansion is revealed through comparisons of host and parasite migration and demographic histories. However, understanding the codistributional history of entire forest communities is complicated by challenges in synthesizing datasets from multiple interacting species of differing datatypes. Here we integrate genetic and fossil pollen datasets from a host-parasite pair; specifically, the population structure of the parasitic plant (Epifagus virginiana) was compared with both its host (Fa

SUBMITTER: Tsai YH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2947922 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature