Testing the parasite-mediated competition hypothesis between sympatric northern and southern flying squirrels (2022) O’Brien et al. 2022, International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijppaw.2021.11.001

Image credit: Stephen Durrenberger, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, Image Cropped

The Crux

One consequence of climate change is that organisms move to new habitats, as they try and track suitable environmental conditions. This can result in closely related species coming into contact with one another, which in turns drives competition among these organisms. Competition between these organisms can manifest as either direct competition (where two organisms directly compete with one another for food or habitat), but it can also manifest as apparent competition.

Apparent competition happens when species A serves as a food source for predators or parasites, which increases the numbers of predators/parasites in the environment. This increase in predators or parasites then puts more pressure on species B. Apparent competition via parasitism was actually a major driver for the decline of red squirrels in the UK, as the introduced grey squirrel brought along squirrelpox virus that had severe effects on the red squirrels.

If one species is more tolerant to a parasite than another, this can result in competitive exclusion, where one species outcompetes the other species to such an extent that the outcompeted species goes locally extinct. This is particularly important when a climate-mediated range expansion brings two species together that share parasites. Today’s authors sought to quantify how infection by parasites affected a vulnerable population after a range expansion by a potential reservoir species.

Read more