Untapped potential: The utility of drylands for testing eco-evolutionary relationships between hosts and parasites

International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife

Corresponding Author: Elizabeth Warburton, ewarburton@uga.edu

 

Although drylands comprise over 41% of Earth’s surface, their parasite fauna remains understudied. This is a critical oversight as desert parasite communities are exemplars within the extremes of parasite ecology and thus readily lend themselves to testing hypotheses of virulence evolution, host specialization, and lifecycle strategies.  This insight becomes increasingly important as larger human populations are projected to live in arid regions as climate changes.

 

Elizabeth M. Warburton, IJP: Parasites and Wildlife, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijppaw.2020.04.003