Résumé
Aim The large-scale description of ecosystem complexity, including the structure of interaction networks, has been largely overlooked although it is known to underpin species co-occurrences and their robustness to climatic or anthropogenic disturbances. Here, we investigated whether the various components of mammalflea interaction networks (richness of fleas, richness of mammals and the richness of mammalflea associations) are spatially congruent and follow the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG). Location Sixteen regions, world-wide. Methods We first took into account the effect of area on diversity by determining the position of regions with respect to speciesarea relationships. We then investigated the spatial congruence between the regional richness of each component of mammalflea interaction networks as well as their latitudinal gradients. We further investigated patterns for fleahost associations by testing for relationships between mammalflea interaction richness and (1) flea niche breadth and (2) host carrying capacity. Results We report divergent LDGs for the different components of mammalflea interaction networks: our data agree with a canonical LDG for mammals, but reveal that the diversity of fleas and mammalflea associations do not follow such a classical gradient. Our results suggest that host carrying capacity is more likely than flea niche breadth to modulate the number of links in hostparasite interaction networks. Main conclusions The complex interplay between geographic variation in host diversity and both host and parasite traits can lead to unexpected spatial patterns such as the invalidation of expected parasites and links in hostparasite web LDGs. Beyond our focus on hostparasite interactions, our study is among the first in the emerging field of interaction network macroecology and paves the way for other components of ecological networks to be investigated across space and time.