Effects of anthropogenic disturbance and climate on patterns of bat fly parasitism.

ABSTRACT: Environmental conditions, including anthropogenic disturbance, can significantly alter host and parasite communities. Yet, our current knowledge is based mainly on endoparasites, while ectoparasites remain little studied. We studied the indirect effects of anthropogenic disturbance (human population density) and climate (temperature, precipitation and elevation) on abundance of highly host-specific bat flies in four Neotropical bat species across 43 localities in Venezuela. We formulated a set of 11 a priori hypotheses that included a combination of the two effectors and host species. Statistically, each of these hypotheses was represented by a zero-inflated negative binomial mixture model, allowing us to control for excess zeros in the data. The best model was selected using Akaike's info

SUBMITTER: Pilosof S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3400619 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature