The role of positive and negative interspecific associations in the organization of communities of intestinal helminths of bats

Abstract

Twelve populations of bats were examined to determine the extent of interspecific associations in determining the species richness of intestinal helminth infracommunities. The pool of helminth species which was available to individual bats ranged from 2 to 21. The ‘summed binomial’ distribution was determined to underlie the host frequency distribution of the number of helminth species per host. Overall covariation in occurrences of species in replicated communities can be detected by testing for the equality of the observed variance of the host frequency distribution to the variance expected when species are allocated to hosts at random. Where statistically significant the covariance was indicative of a majority of positive rather than negative interspecific associations. As the mean number of species per host in a host population increases not only does the number of positive associations increase but so does the proportion of species pairs which exhibit positive associations. Although there is an increase in the proportion of species pairs which exhibit positive associations as the number of species increases, the magnitude of the associations (as indicated by the mean positive or the mean negative pairwise covariances) does not. Therefore, we concluded that positive interactions are more common than negative interactions in determining the species richness of helminth infracommunities of bats. Further, positive associations become even more important as the community becomes more complex. However, the increased importance is derived from the number rather than the strength of the associations.