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Relationships between local and regional species richness in flea communities of small mammalian hosts: saturation and spatial scale

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Abstract

The number of species coexisting in a community may be regulated by local factors (e.g., competitive interactions), or by regional processes (e.g., dispersal from a regional species pool). The relative importance of local and regional processes can be inferred from the shape of the relationship between local and regional species richness. We investigated this relationship in communities of fleas parasitic on small mammals at two spatial scales: between the richness of fleas on individual hosts (infracommunities) and that of fleas on host populations (component communities), and between the richness of component communities and that of the entire regional species pool. We tested linearity (proportional sampling) versus curvilinearity with an asymptote (species saturation) by plotting “local” against “regional” species richness of fleas either among host species or within host species among populations. At the two spatial scales, we found consistent curvilinear relationships between species richness of the more “local” communities and richness of the more “regional” communities. This was true across all host species in the data set and for geographic subsets, even after controlling for the influence of sampling effort on estimates of species richness, and that of host phylogeny in interspecific analyses. We also tested for density compensation in species-poor communities. There was no strong evidence for density compensation at the infracommunity level, although its existence at the component community level appeared likely. Our results suggest that identical patterns in local-versus-regional species richness observed on two different spatial scales arise via different mechanisms: infracommunities appear saturated with flea species most likely because of local processes, such as host immune defenses, whereas component communities are saturated with species through interspecific competition, possibly among larval stages.

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Acknowledgements

This study was partly supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant no. 249/04 to Boris Krasnov, Irina Khokhlova and Georgy Shenbrot) and by the Slovak Grant Committee VEGA (grant no. 2/5032/25 to Michal Stanko). This is publication no. 193 of the Ramon Science Center and no. 499 of the Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ramon Science Center and Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 194, Mizpe Ramon, 80600, Israel

    Boris R. Krasnov & Georgy I. Shenbrot

  2. Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Lofflerova 10, 04001, Kosice, Slovakia

    Michal Stanko & Dana Miklisova

  3. Desert Animal Adaptations and Husbandry, Wyler Department of Dryland Agriculture, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer Campus, Negev, Israel

    Irina S. Khokhlova

  4. Center for Biology and Management of Populations, Campus International de Baillarguet, Montferrier-sur-Lez, France

    Serge Morand

  5. Department of Zoology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Robert Poulin

Authors
  1. Boris R. Krasnov
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  2. Michal Stanko
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  3. Irina S. Khokhlova
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  4. Dana Miklisova
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  5. Serge Morand
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  6. Georgy I. Shenbrot
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  7. Robert Poulin
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Correspondence to Boris R. Krasnov.

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Krasnov, B.R., Stanko, M., Khokhlova, I.S. et al. Relationships between local and regional species richness in flea communities of small mammalian hosts: saturation and spatial scale. Parasitol Res 98, 403–413 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-005-0049-z

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