Risk versus reward: host dependent parasite mortality rates and phenotypes in the facultative generalist Triphysaria versicolor.

Thus, the survivorship of parasites in this experiment was not significantly different, possibly for one or more of three reasons: 1) growing conditions were cooler, hence more favorable causing more co-cultured parasites to establish, 2) host-free plants, which, although they were more likely to survive without hosts, still showed a trend of decreasing survivorship and thus had more time to die (8 vs. 5 weeks), and 3) lack of statistical power – the control group was roughly 1/5 of the size of the multi-host experiment, which we designed with a very large control group ( n = 45) based upon a power analysis from preliminary experiments (data not shown).

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