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The risk of use small matrices to measure specialization in host–parasite interaction networks: a comment to Rivera-García et al. (2016)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2017

PEDRO LUNA Open the ORCID record for PEDRO LUNA [Opens in a new window] ,
ERICK J. CORRO ,
DIANA A. AHUATZIN-FLORES ,
REUBER L. ANTONIAZZI JR ,
NATHALIA BARROZO ,
EDGAR CHÁVEZ-GONZÁLEZ ,
JUAN J. MORALES-TREJO Open the ORCID record for JUAN J. MORALES-TREJO [Opens in a new window]  and
WESLEY DÁTTILO Open the ORCID record for WESLEY DÁTTILO [Opens in a new window]
PEDRO LUNA
Affiliation:
Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
ERICK J. CORRO
Affiliation:
Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
DIANA A. AHUATZIN-FLORES
Affiliation:
Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
REUBER L. ANTONIAZZI JR
Affiliation:
Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
NATHALIA BARROZO
Affiliation:
Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
EDGAR CHÁVEZ-GONZÁLEZ
Affiliation:
Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
JUAN J. MORALES-TREJO
Affiliation:
Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
WESLEY DÁTTILO*
Affiliation:
Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
*
*Corresponding author. Instituto de Ecología A.C., Red de Ecoetología, Carretera antigua a Coatepec 351, El Haya, CP 91070, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. E-mail: wdattilo@hotmail.com; wesley.dattilo@inecol.mx
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Summary

In the last years, there were a growing number of studies using the metric H2′ to calculate complementary specialization in host–parasite interaction networks. However, only a few studies have explored the sensitivity of H2′ to network dimensions (i.e. species richness and number of interactions), which consequently could generate studies that are not comparable among them or lead to biased conclusions. In this study, we used the recent published study conducted by Rivera-García et al. in 2016 involving host–bat fly networks as an example to call attention to the risk of using H2′ to calculate specialization for small matrices. After conducting analyses based on both empirical and simulated data, we show that H2′ values are strongly affected by randomly allocation of species interactions to another cell in the matrix for small networks and that therefore the results and conclusions presented in Rivera-García et al. in 2016 are only an artefact of the dataset used. Therefore, we fully recommended taking into account the careful use of small networks to measuring specialization in host–parasite interactions.

Keywords

Biased conclusioncomplementary specializationhost–parasite interactionsnull models
Type
Research Article
Information
Parasitology , Volume 144 , Issue 8 , July 2017 , pp. 1102 - 1106
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

†

Equally authored paper.

References

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