title: Does moving up a food chain increase aggregation in parasites?
abstract: General laws in ecological parasitology are scarce. Here, we evaluate data on numbers of fish parasites published by over 200 authors to determine whether acquiring parasites via prey is associated with an increase in parasite aggregation. Parasite species were grouped taxonomically to produce 20 or more data points per group as far as possible. Most parasites that remained at one trophic level were less aggregated than those that had passed up a food chain. We use a stochastic model to show that high parasite aggregation in predators can be solely the result of the accumulation of parasites in their prey. The model is further developed to show that a change in the predators feeding behaviour with age may further increase parasite aggregation.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: R J G
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Lester
authors.affiliation: School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia r.mcvinish@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: R
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5168-7012
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: McVinish
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005399:Fishes / Q000469:parasitology*; D020387:Food Chain; D008954:Models, Biological; D010271:Parasites
keywords: Acanthocephala; Monogenea; Taylor's power law; fish; independent increment process; index of dispersion