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

寄生虫占地球生物多样性的很大一部分，但大部分寄生虫生态仍不清楚。大多数寄生虫研究认为，宿主特征是影响寄生虫适应的主要因素，甚至是唯一的因素。这项研究调查了其他生物和非生物因素在调节寄主使用和寄生虫分布方面的作用。丧鸽有两种以羽毛为食的寄生虱子。这些虱子仅限于丧鸽范围内的部分，但这些部分并不是孤立的，甚至有一些重叠的区域。这个项目调查了寄生虫-寄生虫的相互作用和环境特征，即湿度，如何将这些寄生虫物种限制在可用宿主的有限地理子集上。大多数生物是多种寄生虫物种的宿主，这些寄生虫物种之间的相互作用还不是很清楚。这个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寄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，在哀悼鸽的不同范围内，湿度变化很大。这项工作还将评估这两种虱子在低湿度下的存活率。这个模型系统对寄生虫的工作很有用，因为寄生虫和它们的宿主都很容易操纵和圈养。这项工作与试图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具有广泛的相关性。它还有一个重要的培训部分，针对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.