Abstract
Although parasitism is often considered a cost of sociality, the evidence is mixed, possibly because sociality is multivariate. Here we contrast the dependence of parasitism costs on major social variables such as group size and social structure, as measured by network metrics. We conduct two robust phylogenetic meta-analyses, comprising 43 published results for studies with group size and 32 results with social structure metrics. This is the first meta-analytical test of this hypothesis for mammals as a whole. Contrarily to theoretical expectations and previous meta-analyses, there is no relationship between group size and parasitism, but we find conflicting results when analysing different aspects of sociality. Our analysis reveals that social structure is connected to parasite load, possibly because contact between group members, and not group size, is linked to parasite transmission. While more intensely interconnected groups facilitate parasite transmission, large groups are frequently fragmented into smaller, weakly connected subgroups. Strong social modularisation should thus be favoured by natural selection to hamper parasite overload. Future empirical studies should focus on specific parameters of social network structure and on parasite transmissibility. If social structure can evolve fast, even culturally, then host/parasites evolutionary games enter into a whole new fast dynamics, and animal conservation studies should take advantage of this possibility.
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We thank Dr. Luís Maurício Bini, Dr. Ricardo Dobrovolski and Dr. Patricia Izar for their reviews and suggestions in earlier versions of the manuscript, and Dr. Daniel Grear, Dr. Andrew MacIntosh, Dr. Julie Duboscq and Dr. Milagros González-Hernández for kindly sharing data to the meta-analysis. We thank the reviewers and editors suggestions that greatly improved the manuscript. We also thank the Graduate Studies Programme in Ecology: Theory, application and values, Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA), and the funding agencies Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and CAPES. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by JL and analysis were performed by JL and EMN. The first draft of the manuscript was written by JL and HFJ, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Lucatelli, J., Mariano-Neto, E. & Japyassú, H.F. Social interaction, and not group size, predicts parasite burden in mammals. Evol Ecol 35, 115–130 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-020-10086-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-020-10086-6