Diversidade de helmintos de pequenos mamíferos em três ambientes adjacentes na Mata Atlântica

Abstract

The fragmentation of natural habitats makes wild environments increasingly scarce, bringing wild animal populations closer to anthropic environments, where they can become abundant and participate in the cycle of pathogen transmission to humans and domestic animals. The small mammal group and the helminth species can be excellent models for ecological studies of the parasite-host interaction in habitats with different types of land use. In view of this context, our main objective was to analyze the diversity of the small mammal helminth metacommunity among three different types of environments (forest, pasture and peridomicile) that configure the interface of natural environments and human use, in the Municipality of Serro, Minas Gerais, Brazil. We evaluated whether host attributes and the type of environment in which the host was collected affect the probability of occupancy of helminth species. We also evaluated the structure of the helminth metacommunity among the three types of environments and the interaction between host species and helminths. We captured small mammals in three environments: forest, pasture and peridomicile. We analyzed 115 specimens of small mammals for the presence of helminths. To assess our objectives of interest, we performed occupancy modeling, beta diversity analysis, and interaction network. We recorded 15 helminth species and found that the weight and type of environment in which the host was collected act as predictors of the probability of helminth occupancy. The helminth metacommunity is structured by both turnover and nestedness between the three environments and helminths are shared only between hosts of the same order. Overall, our results reinforce the idea that parasites are strongly associated with their hosts, specificity of helminth species with their hosts occurs, probably due to coevolution relationships between them.