Abstract
Understanding the effects of predation on disease dynamics is increasingly important in light of the role ecological communities can play in host–parasite interactions. Surprisingly, however, few studies have characterized direct predation of parasites. Here we used an experimental approach to show that consumption of free-living parasite stages is highly context dependent, with significant influences of parasite size, predator size and foraging mode, as well as environmental condition. Among the four species of larval trematodes and two types of predators (fish and larval damselflies) studied here, parasites with larger infective stages (size >1,000 μm) were most vulnerable to predation by fish, while small-bodied fish and damselflies (size <10 mm) consumed the most infectious stages. Small parasite species (size approx. 500 μm) were less frequently consumed by both fish and larval damselflies. However, these results depended strongly on light availability; trials conducted in the dark led to significantly fewer parasites consumed overall, especially those with a size of <1,000 μm, emphasizing the importance of circadian shedding times of parasite free-living stages for predation risk. Intriguingly, active predation functioned to help limit fishes’ infection by directly penetrating parasite species. Our results are consistent with established theory developed for predation on zooplankton that emphasizes the roles of body size, visibility and predation modes and further suggest that consumer–resource theory may provide a predictive framework for when predators should significantly influence parasite transmission. These results contribute to our understanding of transmission in natural systems, the role of predator–parasite links in food webs and the evolution of parasite morphology and behavior.
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Acknowledgments
We thank B. Kondratieff for identifying damselfly nymphs, D. Preston for collecting fish, C. Orlofske for collecting field-infected snails from Wisconsin and M. Joseph and J. Mihaljevic for statistical advice. The Johnson laboratory provided helpful feedback during manuscript preparation. This project was funded by the Society of Wetland Scientists, the University of Colorado Boulder (CU) Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, a Beverly Sears Grant, the National Science Foundation (Graduate Research Fellowship to SAO and DEB-1149308 and 0841758 to PTJJ) and a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Procedures involving vertebrates were approved by the CU Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (1004.04).
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Communicated by Leon A. Barmuta.
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Orlofske, S.A., Jadin, R.C. & Johnson, P.T.J. It’s a predator–eat–parasite world: how characteristics of predator, parasite and environment affect consumption. Oecologia 178, 537–547 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-015-3243-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-015-3243-4