title: Trade-offs and resource breadth processes as drivers of performance and specificity in a host-parasite system: a new integrative hypothesis.
abstract: One of the unresolved issues in the ecology of parasites is the relationship between host specificity and performance. Previous studies tested this relationship in different systems and obtained all possible outcomes. This led to the proposal of two hypotheses to explain conflicting results: the trade-off and resource breadth hypotheses, which are treated as mutually exclusive in the literature and were corroborated by different studies. In the present study, we used an extensive database on avian malaria from Brazil and combined analyses based on specificity indices and network theory, in order to test which of those hypotheses might best explain our model system. Contrary to our expectations, there was no correlation between specificity and prevalence, which contradicts both hypotheses. In addition, we detected a strong modular structure in our host-parasite network and found that its modules were not composed of geographically close, but of phylogenetically close, host species. Based on our results, we reached the conclusion that trade-off and resource breadth hypotheses are not really mutually exclusive. As a conceptual solution we propose "The Integrative Hypothesis of Parasite Specialization", a novel theoretical model that explains the contradictory results found in our study and reported to date in the literature.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Electronic address: rafael-bpp@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Rafael B P
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Pinheiro
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
authors.forename: Gabriel M F
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Félix
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Instituto de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Florestal, Brazil.
authors.forename: Anderson V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Chaves
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ciências e Linguagens, Instituto Federal de Minas Gerais - Campus Bambuí, Bambuí, Brazil.
authors.forename: Gustavo A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Lacorte
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
authors.forename: Fabrício R
authors.initials: FR
authors.lastname: Santos
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Parasitologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
authors.forename: Érika M
authors.initials: ÉM
authors.lastname: Braga
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
authors.forename: Marco A R
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Mello
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001717:Birds / Q000145:classification / Q000469:parasitology; D001938:Brazil; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions; D008289:Malaria, Avian / Q000469:parasitology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D010802:Phylogeny; D013045:Species Specificity
keywords: Avian malaria; Host specificity; Network analysis; Parasitism; Resource breadth; Trade-off