UC Santa Barbara

Parasites are increasingly recognized as essential components in ecological communities. Hosts and parasites experience intimate, long-lasting associations that impact where they are found in space and how they interact in the larger ecological community. The spatial ecology of parasites is therefore an interesting and complex area of research that requires careful study. In this dissertation I explore three areas of parasite spatial ecology building on some of the latest statistical and mathematical tools in ecology. Specifically, I concentrate on a guild of trematodes in estuaries along the Pacific west coast. I begin by quantifying how parasite distributions vary across space, with special consideration of how to do so when parasite data is limited or affected by error. In the second chapter, I explore how to statistically predict trematode abundance across several estuaries and what these findings suggest about the mechanisms driving parasite abundance. Finally, I define a mathematical model describing host-parasite transmission dynamics in systems that demonstrate an encounter dilution effect as a result of infective stage depletion in the environment. These three works not only improve what is known about the focal trematode guild, but they also improve understanding of how statistical and mathematical models can be used to gain valuable, accurate insight about parasites more generally.