Anthropogenic impacts on Costa Rican bat parasitism are sex specific.

Abstract

While anthropogenic impacts on parasitism of wildlife are receiving growing attention, whether these impacts vary in a sex‐specific manner remains little explored. Differences between the sexes in the effect of parasites, linked to anthropogenic activity, could lead to uneven sex ratios and higher population endangerment. We sampled 1108 individual bats in 18 different sites across an agricultural mosaic landscape in southern Costa Rica to investigate the relationships between anthropogenic impacts (deforestation and reductions in host species richness) and bat fly ectoparasitism of 35 species of Neotropical bats. Although female and male bat assemblages were similar across the deforestation gradient, bat fly assemblages tracked their hosts closely only on female bats. We found that in female hosts, parasite abundance per bat decreased with increasing bat species richness, while in male hosts, parasite abundance increased. We hypothesize the differences in the parasite–disturbance relationship are due to differences in roosting behavior between the sexes. We report a sex‐specific parasite–disturbance relationship and argue that sex differences in anthropogenic impacts on wildlife parasitism could impact long‐term population health and survival.