Linking parasite populations in hosts to parasite populations in space through Taylor's law and the negative binomial distribution.

ABSTRACT: The spatial distribution of individuals of any species is a basic concern of ecology. The spatial distribution of parasites matters to control and conservation of parasites that affect human and nonhuman populations. This paper develops a quantitative theory to predict the spatial distribution of parasites based on the distribution of parasites in hosts and the spatial distribution of hosts. Four models are tested against observations of metazoan hosts and their parasites in littoral zones of four lakes in Otago, New Zealand. These models differ in two dichotomous assumptions, constituting a 2 × 2 theoretical design. One assumption specifies whether the variance function of the number of parasites per host individual is described by Taylor's law (TL) or the negative binomial distribution (

SUBMITTER: Cohen JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5224400 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature