Parasites alter the topology of a stream food web across seasons

摘要: Relatively few published food webs have included parasites, and in this study we examined the animal community a stream across eight contiguous seasons to test how inclusion of helminth parasites alters topology or structure web. Food constructed for each season analyzed using common binary matrix measures show that species richness, linkage density, number observed possible links increased when were as individual nodes. With parasite–parasite predator–parasite omitted, complexity, such connectance (C), generally over multiple seasons. However, relative nestedness (n*) decreased included, which may be result low resolution basal resources inflating specialist-to-specialist links. Overall, adding resulted moderate changes web compared those four other representing different ecosystems. In addition, including revealed consistent pathways energy flow, association parasite life histories along these suggest stable evolutionary groups interacting within community.