DOI: 10.5061/dryad.3r88b02
title: Data from: Evolutionary lability of host associations promotes phylogenetic overdispersion of co-infecting blood parasites

description: 1. Co-infections with multiple parasite taxa are ubiquitous in nature and
 have the potential to impact the co-evolutionary dynamics between host and
 parasite, though patterns of phylogenetic community structure of
 co-infecting parasites and the processes that generate these patterns have
 rarely been studied across diverse host-parasite communities. 2. Here, we
 tested for the roles of host and parasite evolutionary history as well as
 environmental variables as drivers of phylogenetic community structure
 among co-infecting haemosporidian (malaria) parasites and their avian
 hosts in the North American boreal forest, a region characterized by an
 extraordinarily high blood parasite co-infection rate. 3. We used multiple
 methods to identify non-random patterns of co-infection among parasite
 species and determined whether these patterns were influenced more by
 co-evolutionary host associations or environmental variables. We used
 model-based approaches to test whether parasites that occurred together in
 a single host individual exhibited phylogenetic clustering or
 overdispersion. Lastly, we tested whether the observed phylogenetic
 community structure could be explained by parasites having convergently
 evolved similar patterns of host associations. 4. We found that
 haemosporidian parasite co-infections occurred at a high frequency in the
 boreal forest system, and that parasite taxa co-occurred in significantly
 non-random patterns within host individuals and among host species.
 Parasite taxa that occurred in co-infections tended to be phylogenetically
 overdispersed. We show that this pattern of phylogenetic overdispersion
 can be attributed largely to the effect of evolutionarily labile,
 convergent host associations that have resulted in the pool of parasites
 that have the potential to infect a given host consisting nearly
 exclusively of distantly related lineages. 5. Our findings illustrate that
 environmental filtering of convergent traits can produce phylogenetically
 overdispersed communities, even at the level of co-infecting parasites
 within an individual host organism. Broadly, this analysis illustrates how
 co-evolutionary history can have a strong influence on the modern
 phylogenetic community assembly of diverse host-symbiont communities.
description: Appendix_1_Data_For_AnalysisContains primary data file used for analyses.Appendix_2_Lumping_RationaleThis file provides the rationale that was used for each pair of haemosporidian cytb haplotypes that were 'lumped' to form a single species for analysis.Appendix_3_Convergence_Data_FilesData from the ancestral state estimation analysis to detect convergent evolution of host associations.Ancestral_state_analysisContains files needed to replicate the ancestral state estimation analysis from the associated R script (R_code_for_analysis.R)Module_membership_MRMContains files needed to replicate the module membership MRM analyses from the associated R script (R_code_for_analysis.R).PhylogeniesContains phylogenetic tree files needed to replicate the analyses from the associated R script (R_code_for_analysis.R).R_code_for_analysisR script containing code needed to replicate analyses/figures from this study.