TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding the role of parasites in food webs using the group model
AU - Michalska-Smith, Matthew J.
AU - Sander, Elizabeth L.
AU - Pascual, Mercedes
AU - Allesina, Stefano
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology © 2017 British Ecological Society
PY - 2018/5
Y1 - 2018/5
N2 - Parasites are ubiquitous and have been shown to influence macroscopic measures of ecological network structure, such as connectance and robustness, as well as local structure, such as subgraph frequencies. Nevertheless, they are often under-represented in ecological studies due to their small size and often complex life cycles. We consider whether or not parasites play structurally unique roles in ecological networks; that is, can we distinguish parasites from other species using network structure alone? We partition the species in a community statistically using the group model, and we test whether or not parasites tend to cluster in their own groups, using a measure of “imbalance.” We find that parasites form highly imbalanced groups, and that concomitant predation, in which a predator consumes a prey and its parasites, but not the number of interactions, improves the group model's ability to distinguish parasites from non-parasites. This work demonstrates that parasites and non-parasites interact in networks in statistically distinct ways, and that these differences are partly, but not entirely, due to the existence of concomitant predation.
AB - Parasites are ubiquitous and have been shown to influence macroscopic measures of ecological network structure, such as connectance and robustness, as well as local structure, such as subgraph frequencies. Nevertheless, they are often under-represented in ecological studies due to their small size and often complex life cycles. We consider whether or not parasites play structurally unique roles in ecological networks; that is, can we distinguish parasites from other species using network structure alone? We partition the species in a community statistically using the group model, and we test whether or not parasites tend to cluster in their own groups, using a measure of “imbalance.” We find that parasites form highly imbalanced groups, and that concomitant predation, in which a predator consumes a prey and its parasites, but not the number of interactions, improves the group model's ability to distinguish parasites from non-parasites. This work demonstrates that parasites and non-parasites interact in networks in statistically distinct ways, and that these differences are partly, but not entirely, due to the existence of concomitant predation.
KW - community structure
KW - degree
KW - likelihood
KW - motifs
KW - species role
KW - stochastic blockmodel
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U2 - 10.1111/1365-2656.12782
DO - 10.1111/1365-2656.12782
M3 - Article
C2 - 29119557
AN - SCOPUS:85038109044
SN - 0021-8790
VL - 87
SP - 790
EP - 800
JO - Journal of Animal Ecology
JF - Journal of Animal Ecology
IS - 3
ER -