Growth and ontogeny of the tapeworm Schistocephalus solidus in its copepod first host affects performance in its stickleback second intermediate host.

Parasites & Vectors
Daniel P Benesh, Nina Hafer

Abstract

For parasites with complex life cycles, size at transmission can impact performance in the next host, thereby coupling parasite phenotypes in the two consecutive hosts. However, a handful of studies with parasites, and numerous studies with free-living, complex-life-cycle animals, have found that larval size correlates poorly with fitness under particular conditions, implying that other traits, such as physiological or ontogenetic variation, may predict fitness more reliably. Using the tapeworm Schistocephalus solidus, we evaluated how parasite size, age, and ontogeny in the copepod first host interact to determine performance in the stickleback second host. We raised infected copepods under two feeding treatments (to manipulate parasite growth), and then exposed fish to worms of two different ages (to manipulate parasite ontogeny). We assessed how growth and ontogeny in copepods affected three measures of fitness in fish: infection probability, growth rate, and energy storage. Our main, novel finding is that the increase in fitness (infection probability and growth in fish) with larval size and age observed in previous studies on S. solidus seems to be largely mediated by ontogenetic variation. Worms that developed rapidly (ha...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jun 24, 2014·Parasites & Vectors·Victor N MikheevJouni Taskinen
Jul 19, 2013·Journal of Evolutionary Biology·D P Benesh
Mar 13, 2014·Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution·Daniel P BeneshManfred Milinski
Jul 19, 2015·Parasites & Vectors·Markéta OndračkováPavel Jurajda
Jan 30, 2015·Frontiers in Microbiology·David G BironØyvind Øverli
Aug 11, 2016·Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution·Meredith L Cenzer
Sep 30, 2016·Parasitology·Daniel P Benesh
Jun 8, 2017·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Jesse N WeberDaniel I Bolnick
Apr 10, 2019·Proceedings. Biological Sciences·Nina Hafer-Hahmann
Jul 25, 2021·International Journal for Parasitology·Martina LisnerováAstrid S Holzer

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
PCR
exposure
and

Software Mentioned

SPSS
Image J
R

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