We studied compositional turnover in communities of fleas and mites harboured by small mammals using zeta diversity metric (similarity between multiple communities) and asked whether the patterns of zeta diversity decline with an increase in the number of communities differ between taxa and hierarchical scales [infracommunities (parasite assemblages on individual hosts), component communities (parasite assemblages harboured by host populations), and compound communities (all parasite species in a locality)]. The average number of shared species declined with an increasing number of communities (zeta order). It attained zero at higher orders in infracommunities of both taxa with the shape of the zeta decline being best fitted by the negative exponential function, and the retention rate curves being modal. In contrast, zeta diversity values for compound communities of mites and fleas did not attain zero at higher zeta orders, and the form of the zeta decline was best fitted by the power-law function, whereas the retention rate curves were asymptotic. In component communities, the form of zeta decline was best fitted by either exponential or power-law function in dependence of whether communities were considered within a host across localities or across hosts within a locality and whether ubiquitous species were taken into account. Our main conclusions are that (a) the rules governing compositional turnover in parasite communities for the lowest and the highest hierarchical scales are taxon-invariant but scale-dependent and (b) species composition of infracommunities is mainly driven by stochastic assembly processed, whereas that of compound communities is mainly driven by niche-based processes.

中文翻译：

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小型哺乳动物在三种寄生尺度上所携带的外寄生虫群落中的zeta多样性模式：分类群不变和尺度依赖性。

我们使用zeta多样性指标（多个社区之间的相似性）研究了小型哺乳动物所藏有的跳蚤和螨类群落的成分转换，并询问zeta多样性的模式是否随着分类数量和等级制规模的增加而有所下降。个体寄主上的寄生虫组合），组成群落（寄主种群所藏有的寄生虫组合）和复合群落（某个地方的所有寄生虫物种）]。共有物种的平均数量随着社区数量的增加而下降（zeta顺序）。在两个类群的次生种群中，它在较高阶上都达到零，而zeta下降的形状最适合负指数函数，并且保留率曲线是模态的。相反，螨和跳蚤的复合群落的zeta多样性值在较高的zeta阶上未达到零，并且zeta下降的形式最适合幂律函数，而保留率曲线是渐近的。在组成社区中，ζ下降的形式最适合通过指数函数或幂律函数来确定，具体取决于是否在社区中考虑跨社区的社区中还是在社区中考虑跨社区的社区以及是否考虑到普遍存在的物种。我们的主要结论是：（a）最低和最高等级规模的寄生虫群落组成转换的规则是分类单元不变的，但取决于规模；（b）群落中物种的组成主要是由随机装配过程驱动的，