Species colonizations (both natural and anthropogenic) can be associated with genetic founder effects, where founding populations demonstrate significant genetic bottlenecks compared to native populations. Yet, many successfully established free-living species exhibit little reduction in genetic diversity-possibly due to multiple founding events and/or high propagule pressure during introductions. Less clear, however, is whether parasites may show differential signatures to their free-living hosts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParasites are integral members of natural communities, but large-scale determinants of their abundance and diversity, including the importance of biotic and abiotic factors, both natural and anthropogenic, are often not well understood. Here, we examine which factors best predict larval trematode communities in the mudsnail host Ilyanassa obsoleta across a regional landscape. At 15 salt marsh sites spanning 200 km, we quantified the diversity of trematodes and the prevalence (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPassed in 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act has two fundamental objectives: to maintain U.S. marine mammal stocks at their optimum sustainable populations and to uphold their ecological role in the ocean.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDigenean trematode parasites require multiple host species to complete their life cycles, and their abundance can often be strongly correlated with the abundance of their host species. Species richness and abundance of parasites in easily sampled host species may yield an accurate estimate of the species richness and abundance of other hosts in a parasite's life cycle that are difficult to survey directly. Accordingly, we investigated whether prevalence and mean abundance of trematodes could be used to estimate the abundance of one of their host species, diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin), which are difficult to sample and are designated as near threatened (by the International Union for Conservation of Nature [IUCN Red List]) along some U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParasites often play an important role in modifying the physiology and behavior of their hosts and may, consequently, mediate the influence hosts have on other components of an ecological community. Along the northern Atlantic coast of North America, the dominant herbivorous snail Littorina littorea structures rocky intertidal communities through strong grazing pressure and is frequently parasitized by the digenean trematode Cryptocotyle lingua. We hypothesized that the effects of parasitism on host physiology would induce behavioral changes in L.
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