Journal ArticleDOI
Food web topology and parasites in the pelagic zone of a subarctic lake
Per-Arne Amundsen,Kevin D. Lafferty,Rune Knudsen,Raul Primicerio,Anders Klemetsen,Armand M. Kuris +5 more
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TLDR
The study provides a highly resolved food web from the pelagic zone of a subarctic lake and demonstrates that their incorporation may substantially alter considerations of food-web structure and functioning and suggests that the linkage density of free-living species affects their exposure to trophically transmitted parasites.Abstract:
Summary 1. Parasites permeate trophic webs with their often complex life cycles, but few studies have included parasitism in food web analyses. Here we provide a highly resolved food web from the pelagic zone of a subarctic lake and explore how the incorporation of parasites alters the topology of the web. 2. Parasites used hosts at all trophic levels and increased both food-chain lengths and the total number of trophic levels. Their inclusion in the network analyses more than doubled the number of links and resulted in an increase in important food-web characteristics such as linkage density and connectance. 3. More than half of the parasite taxa were trophically transmitted, exploiting hosts at multiple trophic levels and thus increasing the degree of omnivory in the trophic web. 4. For trophically transmitted parasites, the number of parasite‐host links exhibited a positive correlation with the linkage density of the host species, whereas no such relationship was seen for nontrophically transmitted parasites. Our findings suggest that the linkage density of free-living species affects their exposure to trophically transmitted parasites, which may be more likely to adopt highly connected species as hosts during the evolution of complex life cycles. 5. The study supports a prominent role for parasites in ecological networks and demonstrates that their incorporation may substantially alter considerations of food-web structure and functioning.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Wildlife diseases: from individuals to ecosystems
TL;DR: The authors' ecological understanding of wildlife infectious diseases from the individual host to the ecosystem scale is reviewed, highlighting where conceptual thinking lacks verification, discussing difficulties and challenges, and offering potential future research directions.
Journal ArticleDOI
When parasites become prey: ecological and epidemiological significance of eating parasites
Pieter T. J. Johnson,Andrew P. Dobson,Kevin D. Lafferty,David J. Marcogliese,Jane Memmott,Sarah A. Orlofske,Robert Poulin,David W. Thieltges +7 more
TL;DR: It is shown that consumption of parasites is neither rare nor accidental, and that it can sharply affect parasite transmission and food web properties, and broader consideration of predation on parasites will enhance the understanding of disease control, food web structure and energy transfer, and the evolution of complex life cycles.
Journal ArticleDOI
Parasites affect food web structure primarily through increased diversity and complexity.
Jennifer A. Dunne,Kevin D. Lafferty,Andrew P. Dobson,Ryan F. Hechinger,Armand M. Kuris,Neo D. Martinez,John P. McLaughlin,Kim N. Mouritsen,Robert Poulin,Karsten Reise,Daniel B. Stouffer,David W. Thieltges,Richard J. Williams,Claus Dieter Zander +13 more
TL;DR: Parasites primarily affect food web structure through changes to diversity and complexity, however, compared to free-living species, their life-history traits lead to more complex feeding niches and altered motifs.
Journal ArticleDOI
Diverse effects of parasites in ecosystems: linking interdependent processes
TL;DR: It is recognized that parasites influence species coexistence and extirpation by altering competition, predation, and herbivory, and that these effects can, in turn, influence ecosystem properties.
Journal ArticleDOI
Algal diseases: spotlight on a black box
Claire M. M. Gachon,Télesphore Sime-Ngando,Martina Strittmatter,Aurélie Chambouvet,Aurélie Chambouvet,Gwang Hoon Kim +5 more
TL;DR: The biodiversity and impact of pathogens and parasites of aquatic primary producers in freshwater and marine systems are reviewed and how emerging technologies can be used to reassess the profound, multi-faceted, and so far broadly-overlooked influence of algal diseases on ecosystem properties is discussed.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Cascading Trophic Interactions and Lake Productivity
Journal ArticleDOI
The nested assembly of plant-animal mutualistic networks
TL;DR: It is shown that mutualistic networks are highly nested; that is, the more specialist species interact only with proper subsets of those species interacting with the more generalists, which generates highly asymmetrical interactions and organizes the community cohesively around a central core of interactions.
Book
Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems
TL;DR: The nature of predation, the influence of population interactions on community structure, and Ecological applications at the level of communities and ecosystems are examined.
Journal ArticleDOI
Weak trophic interactions and the balance of nature
TL;DR: The results show that weak to intermediate strength links are important in promoting community persistence and stability, and data on interaction strengths in natural food webs indicate that food-web interaction strengths are indeed characterized by many weak interactions and a few strong interactions.
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