Component Endoparasite Communities Mirror Life-History Specialization in Syntopic Reed Frogs (Hyperolius spp.)

Abstract

Most of our knowledge on the processes structuring parasite communities in amphibians originate from temperate-zone taxa, whereas Afrotropical communities have been neglected so far. We found evidence that ecological fitting of the hosts and, probably, differential immune response may influence the variation in parasite species richness, prevalence, and infestation intensity of East African frogs Hyperolius kivuensis and H. viridiflavus. The most closely related host species share the same macrohabitat (that implies the same pool of potential parasites), but differ in microhabitat preference, so that a comparative analyses of syntopic and allopatric populations is expedient to reveal ecological fitting. We detected 11 parasite species (one annelid, four nematodes, five trematodes, one cestode) and two endocommensal species (protozoans). The component parasite communities included 4–5 helminth species in H. kivuensis and 6–8 in the more aquatic H. viridiflavus, supporting the hypothesis that trematode diversity increases with the amount of time spent in water. Five parasite species (Orneoascaris chrysanthemoides, Clinostomum chabaudi, an undetermined echinostomatid) and two protozoans (Nyctotheroides sp., and Protoopalina sp.) are shared among the syntopic amphibian populations. This finding indicates a similar susceptibility of these amphibians to infestation from the local parasite pool. Yet, the low prevalence of single- and multi-species infestations in H. kivuensis indicates that parasite clearing by its immune response is probably more effective and prominent than in H. viridiflavus. Therefore, H. viridiflavus suffered from significantly reduced short-term survival due to the infection. Thus, we conclude that the processes structuring component parasite communities in amphibians do not differ generally between temperate-zone and Afrotropical host species, but they do in the magnitude of ecological fitting.

Amphibians of Rwanda: Diversity, Community Features, and Conservation Status

“…The species has been erroneously considered to occur in Rwanda, but not in Burundi, for almost 60 years [89] and is still listed for Rwanda by all surveyed data bases (see Refs. [7,8,95] and Ref. [6]).…”

“…Ref. [95] lists Afrixalus fulvovittatus for Rwanda. However, only a single species of the Afrixalus fulvovittatus/A.…”

“…Afrixalus laevis (Ahl, 1930): The species is still listed for Rwanda [7,8,95]. The populations from the Central African Albertine Rift that formerly had been assigned to Afrixalus laevis were described as distinct species, Afrixalus phantasma (3.1.15) and A. lacustris Greenbaum, Dehling, Kusamba & Portik, 2022, and the geographical range of A. laevis was restricted to Cameroon and Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea [86].…”

“…Hyperolius acuticeps Ahl, 1924: The East African species of the Hyperolius-nasutus group had been referred to as H. acuticeps [4,126,160,[162][163][164][165], before the group was revised and the only species of the group that occurs in Rwanda was described as a new species, H. rwandae (3.1.28) [82]. Hyperolius acuticeps is still listed for Rwanda [82,95], although the taxon is now considered a synonym of H. microps Günther, 1864 [166], a species that is distributed in Mozambique, Malawi, and coastal Kenya and Tanzania [6,8].…”

“…Furthermore, some recent phylogenetic studies, which comprised species from the Albertine Rift used samples from Rwanda [64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75]. Our own contributions published so far have focused on amphibian communities in anthropogenically altered habitats [76][77][78][79], studies on the taxonomy and ecology of the genera Hyperolius [58,62,[80][81][82][83][84][85], Afrixalus [86,87], and Ptychadena [88][89][90], and amphibian parasites [91][92][93][94][95].…”