Helminth metacommunity of small mammals in a Brazilian reserve: the contribution of environmental variables, host attributes and spatial variables in parasite species abundance

Abstract

The role of environmental factors and landscape heterogeneity on species distribution on different spatial scales is one of the most important questions in community ecology. Variations in the environmental gradient characteristics, host attributes and spatial scales may influence the parasites distribution. The helminth metacommunity of 12 small mammal species was investigated in an Atlantic Forest reserve located in the State of Rio de Janeiro, southeast Brazil. We evaluated the influence of environmental variables, host attributes and spatial factors on the helminth metacommunity of small mammals, considering infracommunity and component community levels. Twenty-nine helminth morphospecies were recovered. The host attributes and spatial variables influenced the abundance of helminth species in the metacommunities for rodents and marsupials together, and for rodents alone at the infracommunity level. Host body mass, host diet and spatial variables at broad spatial scale (among localities) were the most important variables to explain the variation in helminth abundance. Parasite species richness influenced this variation only for the marsupial helminth metacommunity at the infracommunity level. The metacommunity showed larger turnover (parasite replacement) than nestedness (parasite loss) for their helminth species at both infracommunity and component community levels, which is associated with a high host specificity, and low helminth sharing among hosts for most species, resulting in a structured metacommunity.

Helminths of sigmodontine rodents in an agroforestry mosaic in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: Patterns and processes of the metacommunity structure

“…This analysis was performed based on a dissimilarity matrix of the helminth species occurrence in each host species. This matrix was calculated using the Bray–Curtis index, considering the species abundance for each infracommunity and the mean species abundance for each component community ( Cardoso et al, 2020 ).…”

“…The mechanistic approach investigates the contribution of different factors to the metacommunity structure by decomposing the variance of a given set of factors ( Dallas and Presley, 2014 ; Cardoso et al, 2020 ). Host attributes, for example (diet, body mass and abundance) are considered important predictors of host-parasite relationships ( Cardoso et al, 2019 , 2020 , 2021 ; Dallas and Presley, 2014 ; Dallas et al, 2019 ; Kamiya et al, 2014 ). The host's diet can contribute to the acquisition of parasites because many parasites that have indirect life-cycles can be acquired by the consumption of their intermediate hosts ( Leung and Koprivnikar, 2019 ).…”

“…In Brazil, recent studies on helminth metacommunities of wild rodents have been conducted in the Atlantic Forest ( Boullosa et al, 2020 ; Cardoso et al, 2018 ) and in the Cerrado ( Costa et al, 2019 ) using EMS analysis. The mechanistic approach was used in a helminth metacommunity of small mammals in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest ( Cardoso et al, 2020 ); helminths of marsupials were also studied using the pattern-based approach in Brazil ( Cirino et al, 2022 ; Costa-Neto et al, 2019 ). In addition, several studies on helminth metacommunities have been developed in different regions of the world, seeking to understand the patterns and processes of community structure in different hosts.…”

Functional traits shape small mammal-helminth network: patterns and processes in species interactions

“…Later, Cardoso et al . ( 2020 ) investigated the mechanisms responsible for the diversity of the helminth metacommunity of rodents and marsupials. The authors found that host attributes (host body mass, host diet and helminth species richness), as well as spatial variables at a broad spatial scale (among localities), were the most important factors explaining the variation in helminth species abundance at the infracommunity level, i.e.…”

Sistemática de los roedores de la tribu Akodontini (Cricetidae: Sigmodontinae) en base a caracteres morfológicos y moleculares

“…En cuanto a la ecología y taxonomía de la parasitofauna de los roedores Sigmodontinae, existen numerosas contribuciones al estudio de los ectoparásitos (e.g., Gettinger et al 2017, Lareschi et al 2019) y endoparásitos (e.g., Navone et al 2009;Robles et al 2016, Pannisse et al 2017, Gómez Muñoz 2017, Cardoso et al 2020. En las últimas décadas, si bien se reconoce un avance significativo, principalmente de la nematofauna (e.g., Digiani et al 2003Digiani et al , 2012Digiani et al , 2013Digiani et al , 2014Digiani et al , 2015Digiani y Durette-Desset 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2007Digiani y Kinsella 2014;Notarnicola 2004Notarnicola , 2005a; Notarnicola y De la Sancha 2015; Notarnicola y Navone 2011; Robles 2008Robles , 2011Robles et al 2012Robles et al , 2016Robles et al , 2018; Panisse y Digiani 2018) y, en menor medida sobre platelmintos (cestodes y digeneos) y acantocéfalos (e.g., Sutton y Lunaschi 1994, Lunaschi y Drago 2007, Maldonado et al 2010, Guerreiro Martins et al 2014Falcón-Ordaz et al 2019), son escasos los estudios abordados desde una perspectiva integrativa.…”