Université de Fribourg

Ecological implications of parasites in natural Daphnia populations

Decaestecker, Ellen ; Declerck, Steven ; De Meester, Luc ; Ebert, Dieter

In: Oecologia, 2005, vol. 144(3), p. 382

In natural host populations, parasitism is considered to be omnipresent and to play an important role in shaping host life history and population dynamics. Here, we study parasitism in natural populations of the zooplankton host Daphnia magna investigating their individual and population level effects during a 2-year field study. Our results revealed a rich and highly prevalent community of...