Prevalence and beta diversity in avian malaria communities: host species is a better predictor than geography

1. Patterns of diversity and turnover in macroorganism communities can often be predicted from differences in habitat, phylogenetic relationships among species, and the geographic scale of comparisons. In this study, we asked if these factors also predict diversity and turnover in parasite communities. 2. We studied communities of avian malaria in two sympatric, ecologically similar, congeneric host species at three different sites. We asked if parasite prevalence and community structure varied with host population, host phylogeography, or geographic distance. 3. We used PCR to screen birds for infections, and then used Bayesian methods to determine phylogenetic relationships among malaria strains. Metrics of both community and phylogenetic beta diversity were used to examine patterns of malaria strain turnover between host populations, and partial Mantel tests were used determine the correlation between malaria beta diversity and geographic distance. Finally, we developed microsatellit...