Patterns of variation in equine strongyle community structure across age groups and gut compartments

Parasites & Vectors

Research

Claire Laugier¹  Tetiana Kuzmina²  Marta Basiaga³  Núria Mach⁴  Guillaume Sallé⁵  Michel Boisseau⁶ 

[1]Conseil Général de l’Alimentation, de l’Agriculture et Des Espaces Ruraux, Ministère de l’Agriculture et de l’Alimentation, Paris, France

[2]Department of Parasitology I.I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology, National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine

[3]Institute of Parasitology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Hlinkova 3, 040 01, Kosice, Slovak Republic

[4]Department of Zoology and Animal Welfare, Faculty of Animal Science, University of Agriculture in Kraków, 24/28 Mickiewicza Av., 30-059, Cracow, Poland

[5]IHAP, INRAE, ENVT, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, France

[6]INRE, ISP, Université de Tours, Nouzilly, France

[7]INRE, ISP, Université de Tours, Nouzilly, France

[8]IHAP, INRAE, ENVT, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, France

关键词: Horse;    Cyathostomin;    Diversity;    Species network;    Nematode;    Co-occurrence;    Parasite;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s13071-022-05645-5

 received in 2022-07-06, accepted in 2022-12-28,  发布年份 2022

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundEquine strongyles encompass more than 64 species of nematode worms that are responsible for growth retardation and the death of animals. The factors underpinning variation in the structure of the equine strongyle community remain unknown.MethodsUsing horse-based strongyle community data collected after horse deworming (48 horses in Poland, 197 horses in Ukraine), we regressed species richness and the Gini-Simpson index upon the horse’s age, faecal egg count, sex and operation of origin. Using the Ukrainian observations, we applied a hierarchical diversity partitioning framework to estimate how communities were remodelled across operations, age groups and horses. Lastly, strongyle species counts collected after necropsy (46 horses in France, 150 in Australia) were considered for analysis of their co-occurrences across intestinal compartments using a joint species distribution modelling approach.ResultsFirst, inter-operation variation accounted for > 45% of the variance in species richness or the Gini-Simpson index (which relates to species dominance in communities). Species richness decreased with horse’s age (P = 0.01) and showed a mild increase with parasite egg excretion (P < 0.1), but the Gini-Simpson index was neither associated with parasite egg excretion (P = 0.8) nor with horse age (P = 0.37). Second, within-host diversity represented half of the overall diversity across Ukrainian operations. While this is expected to erase species diversity across communities, community dissimilarity between horse age classes was the second most important contributor to overall diversity (25.8%). Third, analysis of species abundance data quantified at necropsy defined a network of positive co-occurrences between the four most prevalent strongyle genera. This pattern was common to necropsies performed in France and Australia.ConclusionsTaken together, these results show a pattern of β-diversity maintenance across age classes combined with positive co-occurrences that might be grounded by priority effects between the major species.Graphical Abstract

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2023

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