title: Ranging behavior drives parasite richness: A more parsimonious hypothesis.
abstract: Parasitism is a ubiquitous interspecific interaction that may play an important role in the evolution of hosts and parasites, molding many aspects of their behavior and ecology. Detecting behavioral changes of hosts infected with parasites is not a straightforward task. Extrapolating from individual-level responses to group-level decision-making is still a much more complex challenge. The ranging behavior of hosts that live in social groups is a good example. Many hypotheses of the cause-effect relationship between this behavior and parasite diversity and load have been proposed. For instance, Brockmeyer et al. [2015, Am. J. Primatol. 77:1036-1048] recently suggested that the richness of protozoan parasites influences the daily path length of free-ranging mandrills. We believe that this explanation for the relationship contains several implicit assumptions. Therefore, we offer an alternative, more parsimonious hypothesis in which daily path length is the driver of parasite richness rather than its consequence. Our hypothesis only assumes that ranging farther exposes animals to a richer parasite diversity. We discuss the data required to test these alternative hypotheses and recall empirical evidence and theoretical modeling results supporting or rejecting their assumptions. We also propose a model of the expected outcomes in terms of species richness, load, intensity of infection, and within-group community similarity of non-lethal environmentally transmitted parasites in social animal groups showing distinct patterns of range use. Am. J. Primatol. 78:923-927, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
authors.affiliation: Laboratório de Primatologia, Faculdade de Biociências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
authors.forename: Júlio César
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Bicca-Marques
authors.affiliation: Laboratório de Helmintologia, Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
authors.forename: Cláudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Calegaro-Marques
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D004463:Ecology; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions; D048528:Mandrillus / Q000469:parasitology*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010271:Parasites
keywords: daily path length; parasite spread; parasitism; re-infection; social animals; theoretical model