COMPARATIVE-ANALYSIS - A TOOL FOR STUDYING MONOGENEAN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION

The comparative approach has been used widely in evolutionary ecology during the last 10 years. In the first part of this study, taking mono geneans of Mediterranean marine fishes as an example, we highlight the pitfalls that may arise in interspecific studies. In the second part, the independent contrast method is used to control for phylogenetic e ffects in order to evaluate the determinants of monogenean species ric hness and their specificity. Our results show the importance of contro lling data for both host sample size and phylogeny to avoid confoundin g effects. Thereafter, taking into account both sampling effort and ph ylogenetic effects, our results show that host size is the main factor affecting monogenean species richness and specificity. (C) 1998 Austr alian Society for Parasitology. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.