Parasitology Research

, Volume 101, Issue 5, pp 1265–1276 | Cite as

Effects of small weirs on fish parasite communities

  • Geraldine Loot
  • Yorick Reyjol
  • Nicolas Poulet
  • Andrea Simkova
  • Simon Blanchet
  • Sovan Lek
Original Paper
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

In this study, we examined the impacts of small weirs on the parasite community of gudgeon and toxostome in a medium-sized river. We tested changes on parasite species diversity using indices that capture both richness and abundance characteristics, and we examined parasite community structure with null models (co-occurrence index C score) and a multiple discriminant function analysis (MDFA). Our results showed that parasite community diversity of gudgeon is strongly influenced by weirs with a maximum diversity upstream of the weirs. Weirs also induce change in abundance of gudgeon parasite species particularly during summer. Nevertheless, we obtained that weirs had no effect on the parasite co-occurrence patterns. In addition, similarity indices indicate that the parasite faunas of newly established limnophilic species (roach and bleak) are host-specific and are rarely transmitted to other fish species. We conclude that fish parasite communities responded in different ways to the presence of impassable weirs, but, in a general tendency, changing environmental conditions induced by weirs may represent an ecological risk.

Keywords

Parasite Species Parasite Community Parasite Diversity Parasite Species Richness Parasite Assemblage 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

Acknowledgements

AŠ was founded by the Research Project of Masaryk University, Brno, Project N.: MSM 0021 622 416. This manuscript was much improved by the comments of Robert Poulin. We are grateful to David J. Paèz and Candida Shinn for correcting the English. We would like to thank Milan Gelnar, Boena Koubková and Markéta Ondraèková, (Department of Botany and Zoology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic) and Salah Bouamer (Centre de Biologie et Gestion des Populations, Campus international de Baillarguet, Montpellier, France) for their help with parasite determination. We are in debt to Fabien Leprieur who helped us in statistical analyses.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2007

Authors and Affiliations

  • Geraldine Loot
    • 1
  • Yorick Reyjol
    • 2
  • Nicolas Poulet
    • 3
  • Andrea Simkova
    • 4
  • Simon Blanchet
    • 1
  • Sovan Lek
    • 1
  1. 1.Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique, U.M.R. 5174CNRS–Université Paul SabatierToulouse Cedex 4France
  2. 2.Département de Chimie-BiologieUniversité du Québec à Trois-RivièresTrois-RivièresCanada
  3. 3.Conseil Supérieur de la PêchePoitiersFrance
  4. 4.Department of Botany and Zoology, Faculty of ScienceMasaryk UniversityBrnoCzech Republic

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