Parasite communities are similar to free-living communities; decay of similarity over geographic distance, theory of island biogeography, species-area relationships and nestedness have been documented in both communities. Ecological succession has been studied in free-living communities but has rarely been examined in parasite communities. We use seriation with replication to test the hypothesis that succession of parasite community structure is deterministic, thus developing throughout consecutive changes along the fish ontogeny, via a seriated pattern. 12 306 marine fishes (95 species) were studied. In 40 species, a seriated pattern was detected; 25 had a tendency towards a seriated pattern, and for 31 species, succession was at random. Age-classes for each host species explained deterministic successional patterns for whole parasite communities and ectoparasites. Richness and number of age-classes explained this pattern for endoparasites. Seriated successional pattern was evident for parasite communities of long-lived marine fish, indicating that parasite communities follow sequential changes over time, like many free-living communities.

中文翻译：

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在海鱼后生寄生虫群落中进行确定性演替测试。

寄生虫社区类似于自由生活社区；两个社区都记录了相似性随地理距离的衰减，岛屿生物地理学理论，物种-区域关系和嵌套性。在自由生活社区研究了生态演替，但在寄生虫社区很少进行研究。我们使用序列化与复制来检验以下假设：寄生虫群落结构的连续性是确定性的，从而通过锯齿状模式沿鱼个体发生整个连续变化。研究了12 306种海水鱼类（95种）。在40个物种中，检出了刺纹。25种趋向于呈锯齿状，对于31种，其演替是随机的。每个寄主物种的年龄类别解释了整个寄生虫群落和体外寄生虫的确定性演替模式。丰富度和年龄段的数量解释了这种模式的内寄生虫。对于长寿命海鱼的寄生虫群落，明显呈现出系列化的继承模式，这表明寄生虫群落与许多自由生活的群落一样，会随着时间的推移而发生连续变化。