Discuss the diversity and ecology of animal parasite
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Answer:
parasitism is a symbiotic relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or in another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life.[1] The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one".[2] Parasites include protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes. There are six major parasitic strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism (by contact), trophically transmitted parasitism (by being eaten), vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropredation.
Like predation, parasitism is a type of consumer-resource interaction,[3] but unlike predators, parasites, with the exception of parasitoids, are typically much smaller than their hosts, do not kill them, and often live in or on their hosts for an extended period. Parasites of animals are highly specialised, and reproduce at a faster rate than their hosts. Classic examples include interactions between vertebrate hosts and tapeworms, flukes, the malaria-causing Plasmodium species, and fleas.
Parasites reduce host fitness by general or specialised pathology, from parasitic castration to modification of host behaviour. Parasites increase their own fitness by exploiting hosts for resources necessary for their survival, in particular by feeding on them and by using intermediate (secondary) hosts to assist in their transmission from one definitive (primary) host to another. Although parasitism is often unambiguous, it is part of a spectrum of interactions between species, grading via parasitoidism into predation, through evolution into mutualism, and in some fungi, shading into being saprophytic.
People have known about parasites such as roundworms and tapeworms since ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In Early Modern times, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek observed Giardia lamblia in his microscope in 1681, while Francesco Redi described internal and external parasites including sheep liver fluke and ticks. Modern parasitology developed in the 19th century. In human culture, parasitism has negative connotations. These were exploited to satirical effect in Jonathan Swift's 1733 poem "On Poetry: A Rhapsody", comparing poets to hyperparasitical "vermin". In fiction, Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula and its many later adaptations featured a blood-drinking parasite. Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien was one of many works of science fiction to feature a terrifying[4] parasitic alien species.
The science of parasitology has a long history, initially seen from a zoological standpoint, with emphasis on the identification and classification of parasites, and the elucidation of life cycles in relation to tropical and veterinary medicine. Currently there are a number of very good texts on important diseases caused by parasites, but general textbooks on parasitology tend to take a broad multidisciplinary approach with coverage on morphology, speciation, life cycles, biochemistry, physiology, and immunology. In some texts special attention is also given to parasite species used as models for teaching and research. However, the first edition of Parasitism written by Bush et al. (2001) was a novel and most refreshing approach not only in describing parasitism as an ecological relationship but also incorporating morphological, immunological, and biochemical aspects. The second edition of Parasitism by Goater et al. (2014) comprises 17 chapters, eight of which are new, but with continuing emphasis on biodiversity, ecology, and evolution of animal parasites. The book has been completely revised to take account of the extensive advances and latest developments in these fields to meet the requirements of a new generation of students, whether in biology, zoology, ecology, evolution, parasitology, immunology or the environmental, medical, and veterinary sciences.
The scope and terminology used in parasitology is clearly covered in the introductory chapter, followed by an overview of innate and adaptive immunity in vertebrates and invertebrates. This is followed by an interdisciplinary approach to immunoparasitology and the new discipline of ecological immunology, where for example ecological factors such as climate, host density and habitat quality can impact on the expression of specific components of host immunity. The following nine chapters cover the biodiversity of animal parasites in greater depth than the first edition, ranging from the Protista to the Arthropoda. The authors have taken a parasite-centred approach to describe the functional morphology, life cycle variation, biodiversity and phylogenetic relationships, and classification in each group. The enormous advances made in parasite systematics over the past decade are emphasized in addition to how such new schemes of phylogenetic classification have led not only to a re-interpretation of the course of evolution in many of the main parasite groups, but also in the diagnosis and treatment of medically important parasites.
The next three chapters summarize advances made in parasite ecology and evolution, beginning with population biology and epidemiology including the use of theoretical models and how parasite populations are distributed and regulated within their hosts. The authors then consider advances made in community ecology by initially characterizing the structure of multi-species parasite assemblages to describing comparative patterns of parasite diversity among host species. Current knowledge on parasite biogeography and phylogeography are drawn from molecular biology, genomics and remote sensing, including the use of parasites as ‘biological tags’ of host distributions and as probes for host evolutionary history.
The final three chapters focus on the nature of host-parasite interactions and the complexity that exists over ecological and evolutionary time scales. There is excellent coverage on the effects of parasites on the metabolism, physiology, behaviour, and reproduction of host individuals, in addition to host population dynamics, host communities, and entire ecosystems. The next chapter synthesizes the evolutionary significance of parasites on their hosts with coverage of parasite-mediated natural selection and the genetic structure of parasite populations, followed by an introduction to host-parasite co-evolution. The concluding chapter summarizes a relatively new multidisciplinary field of environmental parasitology including the role of parasites as biological indicators of anthropogenic change at individual parasite, and also population and community levels.
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