Temperature does not influence functional response of amphipods consuming different trematode prey
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Temperature does not influence functional response of amphipods consuming different trematode prey Ana Born-Torrijos 1 & Rachel A. Paterson 2,3 & Gabrielle S. van Beest 1,4 & Jessica Schwelm 5 & Tereza Vyhlídalová 6 & Eirik H. Henriksen 7 & Rune Knudsen 7 & Roar Kristoffersen 7 & Per-Arne Amundsen 7 & Miroslava Soldánová 1 Received: 19 March 2020 / Accepted: 17 August 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Direct consumption on free-living cercariae stages of trematodes by non-host organisms interferes with trematode transmission and leads to reduced infections in the next suitable hosts. Consumer functional responses provide a useful tool to examine relationships between consumption rates and ecologically relevant prey densities, whilst also accounting for abiotic factors that likely influence consumption rates. We investigated how temperature influences the consumer functional response of the amphipod Gammarus lacustris towards the cercariae of three freshwater trematodes (Diplostomum, Apatemon and Trichobilharzia). Amphipods displayed different functional responses towards the parasites, with Type II responses for Diplostomum and Type I responses for Apatemon prey. Temperature did not alter the consumption rate of the amphipod predator. Trichobilharzia was likely consumed at similar proportions as Diplostomum; however, this could not be fully evaluated due to low replication. Whilst Type II responses of invertebrate predators are common to various invertebrate prey types, this is the first time a non-filter feeding predator has been shown to exhibit Type I response towards cercarial prey. The prey-specific consumption patterns of amphipods were related to cercarial distribution in the water column rather than to the size of cercariae or temperature influence. The substantial energy flow into food webs by non-host consumer organisms highlights the importance of understanding the mechanisms that modulate functional responses and direct predation in the context of parasitic organisms. Keywords Predator-prey . Cercariae . Transmission interference . Gammarus lacustris
Introduction Trematodes are highly abundant parasitic organisms in aquatic ecosystems, with the biomass of their free-living life stages
often equivalent to the most abundant insect orders (Preston et al. 2013). The immense mass of trematodes is largely attributed to the asexual production and daily release of thousands of free-living infective cercariae (larvae) from their first
Section Editor: Stephen A. Bullard Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-020-06859-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Miroslava Soldánová [email protected] 1
Institute of Parasitology, Biology Centre, Czech Academy of Sciences, 37005 České Budějovice, Czech Republic
2
School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3AX, UK
3
The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, P. O. Box 5
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