Abstract
AbstractAimPositive relationships in compositional similarity between consumer and resource assemblages are widely known in free‐living taxa, but less is known about parasites and their hosts. We investigated whether congruent patterns of assemblage similarity across diverse taxa of hosts and parasites exist at a continental scale and quantified the relative importance of host assemblages and environmental variables in shaping these relationships.LocationEuropean freshwaters.Major taxa studiedThe hosts were fishes, birds and mammals. The parasites were monogeneans, trematodes and copepods.MethodsWe extracted distribution data from the Limnofauna Europaea for three aquatic parasite taxa and for three vertebrate taxa functioning as their definitive hosts across 25 biogeographical regions in Europe. First, we investigated β‐diversity congruence patterns between parasite and host assemblages, corrected for the distance between regions using partial Mantel tests. Second, we assessed the relative importance of host assemblages and environmental variables in shaping parasite β‐diversity patterns using generalized dissimilarity models (GDMs).ResultsSpatial community dissimilarities of regional parasite assemblages were positively correlated with those of their respective host assemblages in all five parasite–host groups studied. The GDMs highlighted the equal importance of both host assemblages and environmental variables in shaping parasite assemblages. However, the direct effect of host assemblages was relatively small compared with the effect of environmental factors mediated by host assemblages. Climatic parameters (precipitation and temperature) contributed most to the variance explained by environmental variables.Main conclusionsOur analyses indicate that spatially congruent patterns of assemblage similarity exist between parasites and their hosts at a continental scale. They also suggest that this congruence is driven not only by host assemblages but also by environmental (climatic) variables, either directly or indirectly via their effects on host assemblages. Thus, environmental variables are important for mapping, forecasting and management of parasites at a geographical scale.
Highlights
To identify whether congruence patterns in compositional similarity exist between regional host and parasite assemblages, we investigated estimates of β‐diversity
Our analyses revealed that the similarity of regional assemblages of a diverse range of parasite taxa in the European freshwater fauna was correlated with the similarity of their host assemblages
generalized dissimilarity models (GDMs) showed that parasite assemblages are shaped by the direct and indirect effects of environment and host assemblages (Figure 1c)
Summary
This allowed us to investigate whether congruence patterns in compositional similarity exist between the regional host (fishes, birds and mammals) and parasite assemblages (monogeneans, trematodes and copepods) in the European freshwater fauna. In the signifi‐ cant relationships, the nestedness and turnover components of β‐di‐ versity correlations between host and parasite assemblages showed similar strength [r(βjne) = .24–.25; r(βjtu) = .25–.27; Table 1; Figure 2].
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