Impact of area, isolation, and distance from source on bacterial taxon richness
Median bacterial ASV richness fell between 6 and 11 for each sampled parasite individual, but the range of ASV richness per fragment varied dramatically (Figure 5). While the three sampled sites within REGUA had the highest ASV richness, there was no pattern of decreasing ASV richness with decreasing area, increasing isolation, and increasing distance from a source. A Kruskal-Wallis test confirmed that there was no significant difference between the mean ASV richness among the sampling sites (Kruskal-Wallis chi-squared statistic=17.856, p-value=0.1201). Treating area, isolation, and distance to source as continuous variables also showed no significant interaction between these variables as ASV richness (Area: rho=0.0613, p-value=0.4031; Isolation: rho=0.0020, p-value=0.9787; Distance to Source: rho=-0.0564, p-value=0.4421).