IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v4y2013i1d10.1038_ncomms2723.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fish parasites resolve the paradox of missing coextinctions

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanni Strona

    (University of Milano Bicocca)

  • Paolo Galli

    (University of Milano Bicocca)

  • Simone Fattorini

    (University of Milano Bicocca
    Azorean Biodiversity Group (CITA-A) and Platform for Enhancing Ecological Research and Sustainability (PEERS), Universidade dos Açores)

Abstract

Models of coextinction identify parasites as one of the most menaced ecological groups. The number of host species a parasite uses should strongly affect its risk of coextinction. The naïve expectation is that the lower the number, the higher is the parasite’s risk of being left with no hosts. Here we analyse the coextinction risk of 12,141 fish parasite species and find that highly specific parasites are not the most endangered, because they tend to use hosts with low vulnerability to extinction. This unexpected result may explain why the number of documented host–parasite coextinctions is much lower than predicted by theoretical studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Strona & Paolo Galli & Simone Fattorini, 2013. "Fish parasites resolve the paradox of missing coextinctions," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 4(1), pages 1-5, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms2723
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2723
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2723
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms2723?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giovanni Strona & Pieter S. A. Beck & Mar Cabeza & Simone Fattorini & François Guilhaumon & Fiorenza Micheli & Simone Montano & Otso Ovaskainen & Serge Planes & Joseph A. Veech & Valeriano Parravicini, 2021. "Ecological dependencies make remote reef fish communities most vulnerable to coral loss," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    2. Liu, Xiaoqian & Bearup, Daniel & Liao, Jinbao, 2022. "Metacommunity robustness to invasion in mutualistic and antagonistic networks," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 468(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms2723. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.