18 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
Kim Valenta, Nicholas Grebe, Thomas Kelly, Jennifer W. Applebaum + 6 more
Parasitism is one of the key, structural, interspecific interactions in ecology. One remarkable parasitic strategy that has been documented in multiple systems is the behavioral manipulation of hosts to increase parasite fitness. While not yet documented in humans, we propose that a ubiquitous zoonotic parasite –…
Aurélie Jeantet, Fabienne Audebert, Simon Agostini, Beatriz Decencière + 5 more
Within a host, parasites form a community and interact with each another. They can interact directly through competition for space or indirectly through competition for resources, or even via the host’s immune response. These interactions can influence infection patterns within the host. In particular, helminths are…
Loïc Prosnier, Vincent Médoc, Nicolas Loeuille
Parasites are important components of food webs. Although their direct effects on hosts are well-studied, indirect impacts on trophic networks, thus on non-host species, remain unclear. In this study, we investigate the consequences of parasitism on coexistence and stability within a simple trophic module: one predator…
Colin J. Carlson, Oliver C. Muellerklein, Anna J. Phillips, Kevin R. Burgio + 11 more
Parasite conservation is a rapidly growing field at the intersection of ecology, epidemiology, parasitology, and public health. The overwhelming diversity of parasitic life on earth, and recent work showing that parasites and other symbionts face severe extinction risk, necessitates infrastructure for parasite…
Jason Wood, Ben Ashby
Hyperparasites (species which parasitise other parasites) are common in natural populations and affect many parasitic taxa, including: eukaryotic parasites; bacterial and fungal pathogens; and insect parasitoids. Hyperparasitism is therefore likely to shape the ecology and evolution of many host-parasite systems, and…
Ofir Hirshberg, Frida Ben-Ami
In freshwater communities, organisms interact in a variety of ways, including predation, competition and parasitism. Parasites are ubiquitous, playing an important role in shaping freshwater communities. Endoparasites live within internal organs of their host, while ectoparasites, also known as epibionts, are confined…
Pauline C. Thomé, Justyna Wolinska, Silke Van Den Wyngaert, Albert Reñé + 6 more
Parasitism is the most common lifestyle on Earth and has emerged many times independently across the eukaryotic tree of life. It is frequently found among chytrids (Chytridiomycota), which are early-branching unicellular fungi that feed osmotrophically via rhizoids as saprotrophs or parasites. Chytrids are abundant in…
Maeva A. Techer, Rahul V. Rane, Miguel L. Grau, John M. K. Roberts + 5 more
Multispecies host-parasite evolution is common, but how parasites evolve after speciating remains poorly understood. Shared evolutionary history and physiology may propel species along similar evolutionary trajectories whereas pursuing different strategies can reduce competition. We test these scenarios in the…
Fernando Melara Barahona, Edith Simpson, Ann T. Tate
Parasites play an outsized role in mediating the persistence and stability of host populations. Flour beetles (Tribolium spp.) have long served as classic examples of population dynamics under both disease-free and infected conditions, with elegant combinations of theory and experiments demonstrating, for example, that…
Camilla Håkonsrud Jensen, Jacqueline Weidner, Jarl Giske, Christian Jørgensen + 2 more
Using a dynamic optimisation model for juvenile fish in stochastic food environments, we investigate optimal hormonal regulation, energy allocation and foraging behaviour of a growing host infected by a parasite that only incurs an energetic cost. We find it optimal for the infected host to have higher levels of…
Sarah Bengston, Anna Dornhaus, Christian Rabeling
Social parasitism, where one social species parasitically depends on the other for survival and reproduction, is a highly successful life history strategy, especially in the eusocial Hymenoptera. In ants alone, more 400 species of socially parasitic species exist and multiple forms of social parasitism evolved…
Armando J. Cruz-Laufer, Antoine Pariselle, Michiel W. P. Jorissen, Fidel Muterezi Bukinga + 8 more
Metazoan parasites encompass a significant portion of the global biodiversity. Their relevance for environmental and human health calls for a better understanding as parasite macroevolution remains mostly understudied. Yet limited molecular, phenotypic, and ecological data have so far discouraged complex analyses of…
Tanisha Moons, Nikol Kmentová, Antoine Pariselle, Tom Artois + 3 more
Owing to the largely unexplored diversity of metazoan parasites, their speciation mechanisms and the circumstances under which such speciation occurs—in allopatry or sympatry—remain vastly understudied. Cichlids and their monogenean flatworm parasites have previously served as study system for macroevolutionary…
Kayleigh R. O’Keeffe, Anita Simha, Charles E. Mitchell
Interactions among parasites and other microbes within hosts can impact disease progression, yet study of such interactions has been mostly limited to pairwise combinations of microbes. Given the diversity of microbes within hosts, higher-order interactions among more than two microbial species may also impact disease.…
Colombo Valeria Carolina, Lareschi Marcela, Monje Lucas Daniel, Antoniazzi Leandro Raúl + 2 more
Parasites are integral members of the global biodiversity. They are useful indicators of environmental stress, food web structure and diversity. Ectoparasites have the potential to transmit vector-borne diseases of public health and veterinary importance and to play an important role in the regulation and evolution of…
Eva J. P. Lievens, Yannis Michalakis, Thomas Lenormand
The evolution of host specialization has been studied intensively, yet it is still often difficult to determine why parasites do not evolve broader niches – in particular when the available hosts are closely related and ecologically similar. Here, we used an experimental evolution approach to study the evolution of…
Pascal I. Hablützel, Maarten P.M. Vanhove, Pablo Deschepper, Arnout F. Grégoir + 3 more
In adaptive radiations species diversify rapidly to occupy an array of ecological niches. In these different niches, species might be exposed to parasites through different routes and at different levels. If this is the case, adaptive radiations should be accompanied by a turnover in parasite communities. How the…
Joshua I. Brian, David C. Aldridge
Understanding how environmental drivers influence the construction of parasite communities, in addition to how parasites may interact at an infracommunity level, are fundamental requirements for the study of parasite ecology. Knowledge of how parasite communities are assembled will help to predict the risk of…