DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2003
title: Data from: Condition-specific competition governs the geographic distribution and diversity of ectoparasites

description: Understanding how environmental parameters interact to govern species
 distributions is a shared goal of ecology and biogeography. Biotic and
 abiotic conditions can change distributions by affecting the nature of
 interspecific interactions. Although documented in free-living systems,
 this context dependency has been neglected in parasite interactions. We
 investigated the influence of condition-specific competition on the
 specificity of two species of feather lice (Phthiraptera: Ischnocera) that
 share a host, the mourning dove (Zenaida macroura). We show that relative
 humidity restricts the range of one species, Columbicola macrourae3 (i.e.,
 the C. macrourae lineage found on mourning doves), to the more humid
 eastern United States. The second species, Columbicola baculoides, an
 arid-adapted species, is restricted to drier regions of the western United
 States by C. macrourae3, which outcompetes it in experiments. Thus, arid
 conditions in the West provide C. baculoides with a climatic refuge from
 the competitively superior C. macrourae3, effectively doubling parasite
 diversity on one host species. These results support the hypothesis that
 abiotic factors can determine species distributions on the stressful end
 of an environmental gradient while interspecific competition governs
 distributions at the benign end. The balance between these factors is
 subject to change as environmental conditions change, even if the host
 distribution remains unaffected.
description: Louse populations at
 high and low humidity levelsThis file contains the
 population sizes of the two species of lice, C. macrourae3 and C.
 baculoides at the high and low humidity treatments in a captive animal
 experiment.humidityxlousespp_datafig2.txtPopulations of C. macrourae3 alone and sharing a hostThis file and the next file contain the population size data for the tests for the presence of competition between either louse species alone compared to sharing the host. The data has been split into a file for C. macrourae3 and one for C. baculoides data.mac_AD_NYM_compet_fig3.txtPopulations of C. baculoides alone and sharing a hostThis file and the previous file contain the population size data for the tests for the presence of competition between either louse species alone compared to sharing the host. The data has been split into a file for C. macrourae3 and one for C. baculoides data.bac_AD_NYM_compet_fig3.txtSurvival and reproduction of lice in incubator across humidity levelsThis file contains all the data for the incubator survival and reproduction experiments. It includes adult survival data, number of surviving nymphs per female, and number of eggs laid per female for both C. macrourae3 and C. baculoides at 4 different relative humidity levels (70%, 60%, 50% and 40%).incubat_adlt_nymph_eggs_fig4.txtChange in mass of C. macrourae3 and C. baculoides in incubatorThis file contains the data for the short-term weight loss trial in an incubator. It includes average weights for groups C. macourae3 and C. baculoides before and after time spent in a low humidity environment.incubator_masschange_fig5.txt