Community disassembly and disease: realistic-but not randomized-biodiversity losses enhance parasite transmission.

ABSTRACT: Debates over the relationship between biodiversity and disease dynamics underscore the need for a more mechanistic understanding of how changes in host community composition influence parasite transmission. Focusing on interactions between larval amphibians and trematode parasites, we experimentally contrasted the effects of host richness and species composition to identify the individual and joint contributions of both parameters on the infection levels of three trematode species. By combining experimental approaches with field surveys from 147 ponds, we further evaluated how richness effects differed between randomized and realistic patterns of species loss (i.e. community disassembly). Our results indicated that community-level changes in infection levels were owing to host species comp

SUBMITTER: Johnson PTJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6532514 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature