I've recently read about incidences of parasitic plants that are considered to be keystone species. However, in terms of animals, there have been publications, such as the work of Raffel, Martin and Rohr (2008), that suggest the parasite-as-predator analogy as support for the idea of parasites functioning as the keystone species, but do not provide a concrete example of a parasite that does so. I'm interested in finding out if there have been any studies published about specific parasites that are keystone species in their respective communities.
Please refer to the attached publication below for further information regarding the analogy:
Dear Rose,
it can happen in consortia mainly when parasites are influencing the edificator species. E.g., oak forest consortium influences by parasitic fungi, consortium of Dreisena mussel infected by some nematodes etc. In typical community parasites can influence the dominant species – so can have keystone effect. Esp interesting is case with parasitoids as they can change the behavior of the dominant species - like paper of Hutcher et al (2014 - open access - good refewrences): Parasites that change predator or prey behavior can have keystone effects on community composition
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/1/20130879
Anyway the basic theory in ecology says that parasites can be important regulators in case of mass development of some species. This critically different from predators as from the same ecological concept prey regulate predator - not vise-verse.
Try as well this book
http://libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=16B5F4A143AFF643C7BA853F00260DA0
hi '
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › NCBI › Literature › PubMed Central (PMC
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