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This preprint has been reviewed and recommended by Peer Community In Ecology(https://dx.doi.org/10.24072/pci.ecology.100001). In a recent article,Bicca-Marques and Calegaro-Marques [2016] discussed the putative assumptionsrelated to an interpretation we provided regarding an observed positiverelationship between weekly averaged parasite richness of a group of mandrills(Mandrillus sphinx) and their daily path lengths (DPL), published earlier inthe same journal (Brockmeyer et al., 2015). In our article, we proposed, interalia, that "the daily travels of mandrills could be seen as a way to escapecontaminated habitats on a local scale". In their article, Bicca-Marques andCalegaro-Marques [2016] proposed an alternative mechanism that they consideredto be more parsimonious. In their view, increased DPL also increases exposureto novel parasites from the environment. In other words, while we proposed thatelevated DPL may be a consequence of elevated parasite richness, they viewed itas a cause. We are happy to see that our study attracted so much interest thatit evoked a public comment. We are also grateful to Bicca-Marques andCalegaro-Marques [2016] for pointing out an obvious alternative scenario thatwe failed to discuss and for laying out several key factors and assumptionsthat should be addressed by future studies examining the links between parasiterisk and group ranging. We use this opportunity to advance this discourse byresponding to some of the criticisms raised in their discussion of our article.In this reply, we briefly contextualize the main object of criticism. We thendiscuss the putative parsimony of the two competing scenarios.

A reply to 'Ranging Behavior Drives Parasite Richness: A More Parsimonious Hypothesis'