Abstract
The guppy (Poecilia reticulata) is a model species in ecology and evolution. Many studies have examined effects of predators on guppy behaviour, reproduction, survival strategies, feeding and other life-history traits, but few have studied variation in their parasite diversity. We surveyed parasites of 18 Trinidadian populations of guppy, to provide insight on the geographical mosaic of parasite variability, which may act as a source of natural selection acting on guppies. We found 21 parasite species, including five new records for Trinidad. Spatial variation in parasite diversity was significantly higher than that of piscine predators, and significant variation in parasite richness among individuals and populations was correlated with: (i) host size, (ii) snail species richness, and (iii) the distance between populations. Differences in parasite species richness are likely to play an important, yet underestimated role in the biology of this model species of vertebrate ecology and evolution.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 191112 |
| Journal | Royal Society Open Science |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 1 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Ethics. During the fieldwork, we collected fish under ethical approval granted from The University of the West Indies for R.S.M.’s PhD study, which allowed collection of Poecilia sp. (10 000 individuals maximum) over a 5-year period from 2012 to 2017 from waterways across Trinidad and Tobago. The Research Permit came from Fisheries Division, Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Marine Resources. The Collection Permit came from Wild Life Section, Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Marine Resources. Data accessibility. All data are available in the electronic supplementary material. Authors’ contributions. R.S.M. contributed to fieldwork design, sample and metadata collection, and provided critical input towards the draft manuscript. S.D.K. collected all parasite data in the field and from the literature, and contributed to drafting the early manuscript. P.B. and D.M. provided resources/reagents/materials and critical input and discussion throughout the project. C.v.O. conceived the study, performed analyses and wrote the paper. J.L. conceived the study, performed analyses, led fieldwork and wrote the paper. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Competing interests. We declare we have no competing interests. Acknowledgements. Funded by a British Ecological Society Large Research Grant (5875-6919) awarded to J.L. We are grateful to Tomáš Scholz, Thomas Fayton and Leo Aguirre Macedo for aiding in trematode identification. We thank Ronnie Fernandez for hosting fieldwork at the William Beebe Tropical Research Station.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
ASJC Scopus Subject Areas
- General