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From the host's point of view: Effects of variation in burying beetle brood care and brood size on the interaction with parasitic mites.

ABSTRACT: The fitness and virulence of parasites is often determined by how many resources they can wrangle out of their hosts. Host defenses that help to keep resources from the parasites will then reduce virulence and parasite fitness. Here, we study whether host brood care and brood size regulation can protect host fitness and harm a parasite. We use the biparental brood-caring burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides and its phoretic Poecilochirus carabi mites as a model. Since paternal brood care does not seem to benefit the offspring in a clean laboratory setting, the male presence has been suggested to strengthen the defense against parasites. We manipulated male presence and found no effect on the fitness of the parasitic mites or the beetle offspring. We further manipulated beetle brood size and found larger broods to reduce parasite fitness. The specific pattern we observed suggests that beetle larvae are strong competitors and consume the carrion resource before all parasites develop. They thus starve the parasites. These results shed new light on the observation that the parasites appear to reduce host brood size early on-potentially to avert later competition their offspring might have to face.

SUBMITTER: Schedwill P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6974135 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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From the host's point of view: Effects of variation in burying beetle brood care and brood size on the interaction with parasitic mites.

Schedwill Petra P Paschkewitz Sophia S Teubner Heide H Steinmetz Nadine N Nehring Volker V

PloS one 20200121 1

The fitness and virulence of parasites is often determined by how many resources they can wrangle out of their hosts. Host defenses that help to keep resources from the parasites will then reduce virulence and parasite fitness. Here, we study whether host brood care and brood size regulation can protect host fitness and harm a parasite. We use the biparental brood-caring burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides and its phoretic Poecilochirus carabi mites as a model. Since paternal brood care does ...[more]

PMID: 31961905

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Project description:BACKGROUND:The specialist-generalist variation hypothesis (SGVH) in parasites suggests that, due to patchiness in habitat (host availability), specialist species will show more subdivided population structure when compared to generalist species. In addition, since specialist species are more prone to local stochastic extinction events with their hosts, they will show lower levels of intraspecific genetic diversity when compared to more generalist. RESULTS:To test the wider applicability of the SGVH we compared 337 cytochrome oxidase I mitochondrial DNA and 268 nuclear tropomyosin DNA sequenced fragments derived from two co-distributed Laelaps mite species and compared the data to 294 COI mtDNA sequences derived from the respective hosts Rhabdomys dilectus, R. bechuanae, Mastomys coucha and M. natalensis. In support of the SGVH, the generalist L. muricola was characterized by a high mtDNA haplotypic diversity of 0.97 (±0.00) and a low level of population differentiation (mtDNA Fst?=?0.56, p?<?0.05; nuDNA Fst?=?0.33, P?<?0.05) while the specialist L. giganteus was overall characterized by a lower haplotypic diversity of 0.77 (±0.03) and comparatively higher levels of population differentiation (mtDNA Fst?=?0.87, P?<?0.05; nuDNA Fst?=?0.48, P?<?0.05). When the two specialist L. giganteus lineages, which occur on two different Rhabdomys species, are respectively compared to the generalist parasite, L. muricola, the SGVH is not fully supported. One of the specialist L. giganteus species occurring on R. dilectus shows similar low levels of population differentiation (mtDNA Fst?=?0.53, P?<?0.05; nuDNA Fst?=?0.12, P?<?0.05) than that found for the generalist L. muricola. This finding can be correlated to differences in host dispersal: R. bechuanae populations are characterized by a differentiated mtDNA Fst of 0.79 (P?<?0.05) while R. dilectus populations are less structured with a mtDNA Fst?=?0.18 (P?<?0.05). CONCLUSIONS:These findings suggest that in ectoparasites, host specificity and the vagility of the host are both important drivers for parasite dispersal. It is proposed that the SGHV hypothesis should also incorporate reference to host dispersal since in our case only the specialist species who occur on less mobile hosts showed more subdivided population structure when compared to generalist species.

Dataset Information

From the host's point of view: Effects of variation in burying beetle brood care and brood size on the interaction with parasitic mites.

Publications

From the host's point of view: Effects of variation in burying beetle brood care and brood size on the interaction with parasitic mites.

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