Diet quality determines interspecific parasite interactions in host populations

The widespread occurrence of multiple infections and the often vast range of nutritional resources for their hosts allow that interspecific parasite interactions in natural host populations might be determined by host diet quality. Nevertheless, the role of diet quality with respect to multispecies parasite interactions on host population level is not clear. We here tested the effect of host population diet quality on the parasite community in an experimental study using Daphnia populations. We studied the effect of diet quality on Daphnia population demography and the interactions in multispecies parasite infections of this freshwater crustacean host. The results of our experiment show that the fitness of a low-virulent microsporidian parasite decreased in low, but not in high-host-diet quality conditions. Interestingly, infections with the microsporidium protected Daphnia populations against a more virulent bacterial parasite. The observed interspecific parasite interactions are discu...