Abstract
Host-parasite interactions represent a selective force that may reduce hosts’ lifespan, their reproductive success and survival. Environmental conditions can affect host-parasite communities, leading to distinct patterns of interactions with divergent ecological and evolutionary consequences for their persistence. Here, we tested whether climatic oscillation shapes the temporal dynamics of bird-haemosporidian associations, assessing the main mechanisms involved in the temporal dissimilarity of their interactions’ networks. For two years, we monthly sampled birds in a tropical coastal ecosystem to avian malaria molecular diagnosis. The studied networks exhibited high specialization, medium modularity, with low niche overlap among parasites lineages. Moreover, alpha and β-diversity of hosts, parasites and their interactions, as well as the structure of their networks were temporally consistent, i.e., stable under fluctuations in temperature or precipitation over seasons. The structure and temporal consistency of the studied antagonistic networks suggest a high fidelity between partners, which is likely relevant for their evolutionary persistence.
Highlights
Host-parasite interactions represent a selective force that may reduce hosts’ lifespan, their reproductive success and survival
We studied infected birds from a tropical coastal ecosystem and tested whether: (1) the temporal dissimilarity of birds and parasites is driven by species turnover or species gain/loss across seasons; (2) whether species turnover or interaction switching modulate the temporal dissimilarity of bird-parasite interactions; (3) whether the structure of avian-parasite networks are determined by temporal oscillations of abiotic conditions; and (4) whether the networks formed by distinct parasite genera, Plasmodium and Haemoproteus, are similar in terms of structure and infected host species
Even though α and β-diversities of birds were consistent over time, the existing temporal dissimilarity was mostly due to species turnover (87%), than to species gain and/or loss across seasons
Summary
Host-parasite interactions represent a selective force that may reduce hosts’ lifespan, their reproductive success and survival. It is known that haemosporidian parasitism strongly affect avian-hosts community structure, including decline and extinction of hosts populations[7,8] In this way, host-parasite interactions are excellent models for understanding the structure and temporal dynamics of antagonistic systems, such as emerging infectious diseases[9,10]. Suggests a lack of correlation between host specificity and haemosporidian prevalence, despite the strong network modularity, wherein modules represent phylogenetic proximity among host s pecies[37] As follows, it seems that modularity in interactions networks, i.e. a structure that emerges when cohesive subgroups of species interacts among themselves in higher frequency than with the remaining network[38], is an important property that provides stability in antagonistic s ystems[29]
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