What causes the increase in aggregation as a parasite moves up a food chain?

Abstract

General laws in ecological parasitology are scarce. Here we evaluate data published by over 100 authors to determine whether the number of hosts in a life cycle is associated with the degree of aggregation of fish parasites at different stages. Parasite species were grouped taxonomically to produce 20 or more data points per group as far as possible. Most parasites that remained at one trophic level were less aggregated than those that had passed up a food chain. We use a stochastic model to show that high parasite overdispersion in predators can be solely the result of the accumulation of parasites in their prey. The model is further developed to show that a change in the predators feeding behaviour with age may further increase parasite aggregation.