Community structure of digenean parasites of sparid and labrid fishes of the Mediterranean sea: A new approach

P. Sasal (1) , N. Niquil (2, 3, 4, 5) , P. Bartoli (6)

1 PFE - Parasitologie fonctionnelle et évolutive [2003-2006]
2 BOREA - Biologie des Organismes et Ecosystèmes Aquatiques
3 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
4 UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie
5 NU - Normandie Université
6 DIMAR - Diversité, évolution et écologie fonctionnelle marine

The aim of this work was to study the structure of the parasite communities of Digeneans of 2 families of Teleost fishes (Sparidae and Labridae) of the Mediterranean sea. We tried to quantify the importance of both the microhabitat requirements of the parasite species and the effect of host biological factors on the parasite communities. We applied, for the first time in parasite community studies, the Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) to analyse (i) the spatial distribution of parasite species within the digestive tract of the hosts; (ii) the host's biological factors (such as diet, host length, gregariousness and abundance) that may influence this spatial distribution of parasite species. Our results showed that potential microhabitats were vacant in the 2 host families studied revealing a lack of niche saturation because either there was little inter- and/or intraspecific competition or there were enough available space and resources within the host. Our results also indicated that the position of the parasite in the digestive tract is much more important than host biological factors for the structure of parasite community. Finally, we highlight the potential use of the CCA method for controlling for phylogenetic constraints in multi-species analyses.

Mots clés: Mediterranean Sea; nonhuman; Animals; Ecosystem; parasite; Fishes; Fish; article; diet; Canonical Correspondence Analysis; community; Digeneans; Digestive System; fish disease; Fish Diseases; host; Host-Parasite Relations; Parasite community; phylogeny; priority journal; Specificity; Statistics; teleost; Trematoda; Trematode Infections

Domaines: Ecosystèmes; Biodiversité et Ecologie; Environnement et Société

P. Sasal, N. Niquil, P. Bartoli. Community structure of digenean parasites of sparid and labrid fishes of the Mediterranean sea: A new approach. Parasitology, 1999, 119 (6), pp.635--648. ⟨10.1017/S0031182099005077⟩. ⟨hal-02454866⟩