Back
Full-text
Journal article

Diet quality determines interspecific parasite interactions in host populations.

  • Lange B Laboratory Aquatic Biology, Science & Technology-Kulak, KU Leuven Kortrijk, 8500, Belgium.
  • Reuter M Department of Genetics, Evolution & Environment, University College London London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
  • Ebert D Zoological Institute, University of Basel Basel, CH-4051, Switzerland.
  • Muylaert K Laboratory Aquatic Biology, Science & Technology-Kulak, KU Leuven Kortrijk, 8500, Belgium.
  • Decaestecker E Laboratory Aquatic Biology, Science & Technology-Kulak, KU Leuven Kortrijk, 8500, Belgium.
  • 2014-09-24
Published in:
  • Ecology and evolution. - 2014
Daphnia magna
disease dynamics
food quality
host population demography
interspecific parasite competition
multispecies infections
parasite ecology
unicellular gut parasite
white bacterial disease
English The widespread occurrence of multiple infections and the often vast range of nutritional resources for their hosts allow that interspecific parasite interactions in natural host populations might be determined by host diet quality. Nevertheless, the role of diet quality with respect to multispecies parasite interactions on host population level is not clear. We here tested the effect of host population diet quality on the parasite community in an experimental study using Daphnia populations. We studied the effect of diet quality on Daphnia population demography and the interactions in multispecies parasite infections of this freshwater crustacean host. The results of our experiment show that the fitness of a low-virulent microsporidian parasite decreased in low, but not in high-host-diet quality conditions. Interestingly, infections with the microsporidium protected Daphnia populations against a more virulent bacterial parasite. The observed interspecific parasite interactions are discussed with respect to the role of diet quality-dependent changes in host fecundity. This study reflects that exploitation competition in multispecies parasite infections is environmentally dependent, more in particular it shows that diet quality affects interspecific parasite competition within a single host and that this can be mediated by host population-level effects.
Language
  • English
Open access status
gold
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/92618
Statistics
Document views: 39 File downloads:
  • Full-text: 0