Dissertation Research: Ecological Determinants of Geographic Specificity in Host Specific Parasites: Experiments with Mourning Dove Feather Lice

寄生虫代表了地球生物多样性的很大一部分，但许多寄生虫生态学仍然不为人所知。大多数寄生虫研究都假设宿主特征是影响寄生虫适应的主要因素，甚至是唯一因素。本研究探讨了其他生物和非生物因素在宿主利用和寄生虫分布中的作用。哀鸽有两种以羽毛为食的寄生虱子。这些虱子仅限于哀鸽范围的一部分，但这些部分并不是孤立的，甚至有一些重叠的区域。该项目研究了寄生虫-寄生虫相互作用和环境特征，湿度，可能限制这些寄生虫物种到有限的可用宿主的地理子集。大多数生物体都是多种寄生虫的宿主，而这些寄生虫之间的相互作用尚不清楚。该项目将测试不同虱子物种之间的竞争性相互作用如何影响整个宿主范围内的虱子群落组成。湿度水平对许多昆虫的生存至关重要，在哀鸽的活动范围内变化很大。这项工作还将评估两种虱子在低湿度下的存活率。这个模型系统对寄生虫的研究很有用，因为寄生虫和它们的宿主都很容易被操纵和圈养。这项工作与了解寄生虫和疾病在人类、家养动物和濒危野生动物中的分布有着广泛的关系。它也有一个重要的培训组成部分，为一名博士生和一名本科生助理。

Parasites represent a large fraction of the biodiversity of the earth, yet much of parasite ecology remains obscure. Most parasite studies assume that host characters are the primary, indeed, only factor influencing parasite adaptation. This research investigates the roles of other living and non-living factors that mediate host use and parasite distribution. Mourning Doves have two species of feather-feeding, ectoparasitic lice. These lice are restricted to subsections of the Mourning Dove range, but these sections are not isolated and even have some area of overlap. This project investigates how parasite-parasite interactions and an environmental character, humidity, may be restricting these parasite species to a limited geographic subset of the available hosts. Most organisms play host to multiple parasite species and the interactions between the parasite species are not well understood. This project will test how competitive interactions between different louse species affect louse community composition across the entire range of the host. Humidity levels, which are critical to the survival of many insects, vary greatly across the range of the Mourning Dove. This work will also evaluate survival of the two species of lice at low humidity. This model system is useful for parasite work because both the parasites and their hosts are easy to manipulate and keep in captivity. This work is broadly relevant to attempts to understand parasite and disease distributions in humans, domesticated animals and endangered wildlife. It also has an important training component, for one Ph.D. student and an undergraduate assistant.