Component and compound communities

Abstract

As previously outlined, component and compound parasite communities should be considered within the context of specific hierarchical scales. Thus, a component community consists of all the infracommunities of a species within a given ecosystem, while a compound community is composed of all the component communities within the same ecosystem. A discussion of these community concepts has been combined in this chapter for two reasons. First, it was a matter of convenience and clarity as far as the authors were concerned. Second, because so few studies have actually been conducted at the compound community level, it was believed that a chapter devoted solely to this level of organization would not stand alone very well.