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A Study of Sympatry in the Water Mite Genus Arrenurus (Family Arrenuridae)
Author(s) -
Mitchell Rodger
Publication year - 1964
Publication title -
ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.144
H-Index - 294
eISSN - 1939-9170
pISSN - 0012-9658
DOI - 10.2307/1936107
Subject(s) - sympatry , biological dispersal , biology , ecology , genus , host (biology) , fauna , sympatric speciation , mite , habitat , population , demography , sociology
Sympatry is common among species is the genus Arrenurus; this paper considers the fauna of a small pond in which 26 species of the genus were found during a six—year period. Resources were adequate for the aquatic phase of the life cycle as evidenced by the regular success of dispersal from adjacent habitats. One—fourth of the species records were species unable to reproduce because of unfavorable conditions for the parasitic of the life cycle. This was not a matter of the host being absent but involved a complicated mite—habitat—host interaction. The dynamics of this interaction can be postulated with a modified life—table formulation which conforms with available data. The formulation defines a set of relations between host specificity, variations in host exploitation, and regulation of parasite density which can be studied to test the validity of the model.