Host-parasite data from Ecuador and the Ozarks used to test hypotheses regarding reciprocal specialization

By | October 27th, 2014|Amazon, birds, disease, malaria, research, tropical|

Are host-parasite systems more specialized in the tropics than in the temperate zones?  We asked this question using community-wide data on avian malaria parasites in the Ecuadorean Amazon and in the Ozarks.  In both systems we found that host-parasite were highly specialized, much more so than expected by chance.  Tropical birds also tended to have [...]