Host-parasite relationships in invasive species: macroecological framework

Abstract

Despite considerable research effort, many aspects of the host-parasite relationships and parasite spatial distribution in invasive hosts remain poorly understood due to complex and context-dependent phenomena related to both the bioinvasions and the parasitism. Using macroecological patterns and theory is a useful approach to analyzing parasitological observations, but in practice parasite ecology and classical macroecology are disconnected. We propose a new framework that can use the conventional parasitology sampling data much more effectively. The innovative concept combines the data inferred from populations, infra- and component communities of parasites and the application of a macroecological approach in the analysis of complex and frequently hidden relationships in host-parasite systems. This comparative analysis draws on parasite data across regions and host species at different organizational (population vs. community) and hierarchical (infra vs. component community) levels of parasites. Our framework based on assessing and analysis of parasitological and ecological indexes, including descriptors of parasite species richness (individual and total), infection parameters, parasite aggregation (Taylor´s power law) and macroecological models (abundance-variance and abundance-occupancy relationships), can produce mechanistic explanations of the Enemy Release Hypothesis and unravel host-parasite relationships of an invasive host and its parasites. Moreover, abundance-variance and abundance-occupancy relationships, core-satellite species hypothesis, patterns on the aggregation and the frequency distribution of prevalence, infrapopulation size and individual parasite species richness provide useful tools to distinguish co-introduced and acquired parasites in communities of the invasive host based on quantitative descriptors. We hope that our framework becomes widely applied as it can potentially contribute to enhance future practice and research in biodiversity conservation and control of invasive species.