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Parasites alter the topology of a stream food web across seasons

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Abstract

Relatively few published food webs have included parasites, and in this study we examined the animal community in a stream across eight contiguous seasons to test how inclusion of helminth parasites alters the topology or structure of the food web. Food webs constructed for each season and analyzed using common binary matrix measures show that species richness, linkage density, and the number of observed and possible links increased when parasites were included as individual species nodes. With parasite–parasite and predator–parasite links omitted, measures of community complexity, such as connectance (C), generally increased over multiple seasons. However, relative nestedness (n*) decreased when parasites were included, which may be a result of low resolution of basal resources inflating specialist-to-specialist links. Overall, adding parasites resulted in moderate changes in food web measures when compared to those of four other published food webs representing different ecosystems. In addition, including parasites in the food web revealed consistent pathways of energy flow, and the association of parasite life histories along these pathways suggest stable evolutionary groups of interacting species within the community.

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Acknowledgments

We thank K. Lafferty and M. Huxham for discussions, comments, suggestions and encouragement during the early preparation of this manuscript. We are grateful for comments and suggestions by S. Kohler and two anonymous reviewers, which helped focus and improve this manuscript. Assistance from O. Petchey with Rgraphviz to generate the summary food webs is also greatly appreciated. Hatch Funds, NJ Water Resources Research Institute Grants, and the Rutgers Parasitology Research Fund provided support for this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources, and Graduate Program in Ecology and Evolution, Rutgers—The State University, 14 College Farm Road, New Brunswick, NJ, 08901, USA

    Alexander D. Hernandez & Michael V. K. Sukhdeo

  2. Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Aichi, 484-8506, Japan

    Alexander D. Hernandez

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  1. Alexander D. Hernandez
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  2. Michael V. K. Sukhdeo
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Correspondence to Alexander D. Hernandez.

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Communicated by Steven Kohler.

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Hernandez, A.D., Sukhdeo, M.V.K. Parasites alter the topology of a stream food web across seasons. Oecologia 156, 613–624 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-008-0999-9

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