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).