Estrutura das redes de interações entre morcegos (Mammalia: Chiroptera) e moscas ectoparasitas (Diptera: Streblidae, Nycteribiidae) em um gradiente latitudinal

Abstract

The study of parasites and their distributions is an important tool to understand the problems related to population dynamics and the evolution of the interactions between parasites and their hosts. Due in part to the unique adaptations of this group, bats are parasitized by many arthropod lineages, and the flies of the Streblidae and Nycteribiidae families are considered the most conspicuous. Network analysis is an approach that has been growing in recent decades and has contributed greatly to the understanding of ecological systems in a more complete way, evaluating the way the species connect and the implications of these interactions for the system. In this context, the objective of this study is to analyze if the structure of the bats-ectoparasitic networks is consistent along the latitudinal gradient on a global scale. To do this, we searched the data in scientific publications available in the literature that presented information about the relation bats and their ectoparasite dipterans of the Streblidae and Nycteribiidae families using the Scopus, Google Scholar and PubMed databases. The sources cited and referenced in the publications taken from the database were also analyzed. For each publication, one or more infeed bats and flies were set up and the nesting, connectivity, and modularity parameters were calculated for each network separately. In order to evaluate if the structure of the networks varies along the latitudinal gradient, we constructed generalized linear models (GLM). In general, we observed that the ectoparasite bats interaction networks have a highly modular structure and with low nesting and connectivity values, the pattern commonly presented by networks of antagonistic interactions. We also observed that the size of the network influenced significantly the nesting, connectivity and modularity, possibly due to the highly specialized nature of the ectoparasite bat interaction. On the other hand, the latitude was positively related to the connectivity which can be explained by the lower diversity observed in temperate regions.