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Trophic Structure, Stability, and Parasite Persistence Threshold in Food Webs

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Abstract

Food web structure of free-living species is an important determinant of parasite species richness. Downwardly asymmetric predator–prey interactions (where there are more prey than predator species) have been shown, both theoretically and empirically, to harbour more trophically transmitted parasite species than expected due to chance. Here, we demonstrate that this could be due to the increase in the basic reproductive ratio that the addition of non-host prey species to a system creates. However, we note that the basic reproductive ratio is only increased by those prey that stabilise oscillations in a predator–prey system, and is decreased by those that do not.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the referees for their careful work and useful and perceptive comments, which have very much improved the paper. C.F. McQuaid is a Commonwealth Scholar, funded by the Department for International Development, UK.

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  1. Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK

    C. Finn McQuaid & Nicholas F. Britton

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  1. C. Finn McQuaid
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  2. Nicholas F. Britton
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Correspondence to C. Finn McQuaid.

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McQuaid, C.F., Britton, N.F. Trophic Structure, Stability, and Parasite Persistence Threshold in Food Webs. Bull Math Biol 75, 2196–2207 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-013-9887-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-013-9887-5

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