Impact of ontogenetic dietary shifts on the food-transmitted intestinal parasite communities of two lake salmonids

Raw data used for the paper "Impact of ontogenetic dietary shifts on the food-transmitted intestinal parasite communities of two lake salmonids". The study investigates whether changes in the intestinal parasite communities of Arctic charr and brown trout are related to ontogenetic shifts in diet and if these changes are due to variations in parasite taxa composition or changes in the relative abundance of acquired parasites. We firstly hypothesized that both salmonid species show distinct changes in the structure of their intestinal parasite communities related to their expected ontogenetic dietary shifts. Secondly, we hypothesized that variability in the structure of the intestinal parasite community in the generalist Arctic charr is driven by changes in the relative abundance of the parasite assemblages, while that of the specialist brown trout having more pronounced ontogenetic dietary shifts, to a larger extent is affected by changes in parasite taxa composition. Descriptive and statistical analyses were performed with the open-source software Rstudio (version 1.1.423, Rstudio Inc.) based on R (version 3.5.1, R Core Team) and the R based software QPweb (version 1.0.14, Reiczigel et al. (2019)), for further details on the methodology used, please refer to our publication.

本数据集为论文《个体发育饮食转变对两种湖栖鲑科鱼类经食物传播的肠道寄生虫群落的影响》的配套原始数据。本研究旨在探究北极红点鲑（Arctic charr）与褐鳟（brown trout）的肠道寄生虫群落变化是否与其饮食的个体发育饮食转变（ontogenetic dietary shifts）相关，且此类变化究竟源于寄生虫类群组成的差异，还是宿主通过摄食获得的寄生虫类群的相对丰度改变。本研究首先提出如下假说：两种鲑科鱼类的肠道寄生虫群落结构均会随着预期的个体发育饮食转变发生显著变化。其次提出第二项假说：作为泛食性物种的北极红点鲑，其肠道寄生虫群落结构的变异主要由寄生虫类群组合的相对丰度变化驱动；而特食性的褐鳟个体发育饮食转变更为显著，其肠道寄生虫群落结构在更大程度上受寄生虫类群组成变化的影响。本研究采用基于R语言（版本3.5.1，R核心团队）的开源软件RStudio（Rstudio，版本1.1.423，RStudio公司），以及基于R语言的QPweb软件（版本1.0.14，Reiczigel等人，2019）完成描述性与统计分析。有关本研究采用的方法的详细细节，请参阅本研究的正式发表文献。