Maya Risin, a student from Emory University, worked with Dr. John Drake to study superspreading in macroparasites.
Abstract: It is widely understood that host populations harboring macroparasites, which include parasitic helminths and arthropods, typically exhibit skewed infection burdens that give rise to “superspreading”. On the individual level, concurrent infections by multiple parasitic species within an individual host, known as “co-infection”, can have profound implications for the co-infecting parasite species’ fitness, host health, and determinants of disease transmission. The characteristics of both hosts and parasites are hypothesized to play a critical role in influencing these patterns. To address currently unanswered questions, we developed the first meta-database of macroparasite burdens among diverse host species with an emphasis on sources of heterogeneities in host-parasite systems. In this study, we examine individual-level data on macroparasite abundance in freshwater and marine ecosystem hosts, primarily fish, aiming to answer two key questions: (1) Do specific host traits contribute to the occurrence of superspreading of one or more parasites in particular individuals? (2) Does the taxonomy of parasites influence the relationship between co-infecting macroparasite pairs? We used logistic regression to test for effects of host body length and weight as predictors of superspreading and we compared the correlations between co-infecting parasite pairs among parasite species with different relatedness. Our findings revealed that host body length and weight did not significantly impact superspreading. However, the shared taxonomic rank of co-infecting macroparasites did significantly influence co-infection, especially at the family and genus levels. These results not only improve our comprehension of potential drivers of superspreading but also highlight the importance of interspecific parasite interactions in shaping co-infection patterns.
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