Corrigendum to Streicker et al. (2013) Differential sources of host species heterogeneity influence the transmission and control of multi-host parasites

Abstract

In a recent article, we described a conceptual and analytical model to identify the key host species for parasite transmission in multi-host communities and used data from 11 gastro-intestinal parasites infecting up to five small mammal host species as an illustrative example of how the framework could be applied. A limitation of these empirical data was uncertainty in the identification of parasite species using egg/oocyst morphology, which could overestimate parasite sharing between host species. Here, we show that the key results of the original analysis, namely that (1) parasites naturally infect multiple host species, but typically rely on a small subset of infected host species for long-term maintenance, (2) that different mechanisms underlie how particular host species dominate transmission and (3) that these different mechanisms influence the predicted efficiency of disease control measures, are robust to analysis of a smaller subset of host-parasite combinations that we have greatest confidence in identifying. We further comment briefly on the need for accurate parasite identification, ideally using molecular techniques to quantify cross-species transmission and differentiate covert host specificity from true host generalism.

Figure 1

Contributions of three sources of host heterogeneity for eight multi‐host parasites (Revised from Figure 3 of the original paper). Symbol sizes are proportional to the total contribution of infectious stages produced by each host species. Squares indicate the key host species (π _i > 0.5) for each parasite.

Figure 2

Efficacy of three control strategies for empirical multi‐host parasites (Revised from Figure 4 of the original paper). Each panel shows the expected reduction in the infectious pool size by random removal of individuals regardless of host species (green) and by targeted (blue) and untargeted (red) removal of the most influential host species (shown in the title of each panel). The dashed line shows the maximum reduction that can be achieved by removing all individuals of the key host species (i.e. the proportion of transmission due to non‐key host species). The J’ values relate to Pielou's evenness index, and quantify the degree of variability across the host community in contributions to parasite transmission; values of J’ lie between 0 (complete dominance by a single species) and 1 (equal contributions of all infected host species).