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Faculty Publications from the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology Parasitology, Harold W. Manter Laboratory of

12-2002

Review of Parasitism: The Diversity and Ecology of Animal Parasites by Albert O. Bush, Jacqueline C. Fernández, Gerald W. Esch and J. Richard Seed (Cambridge University, 2002)

Daniel R. Brooks University of Toronto, [email protected]

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Brooks, Daniel R., "Review of Parasitism: The Diversity and Ecology of Animal Parasites by Albert O. Bush, Jacqueline C. Fernández, Gerald W. Esch and J. Richard Seed (Cambridge University, 2002)" (2002). Faculty Publications from the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology. 282. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/parasitologyfacpubs/282

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Parasitology, Harold W. Manter Laboratory of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications from the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Brooks in BioScience (2002) 52. Copyright 2002, American Institute of Biological Sciences. Used by permission. Review of Parasitism: The Diversity and Ecology of Animal Parasites by Bush, Fernández, Esch & Seed (Cambridge University, 2002) Books

Inside the Tangled Bank

Parasitism: The Diversity and Ecology evolution have appeared in the past the teaching of parasitism at the under­ of Animal Parasites. Albert O. Bush, decade, and they continue to appear graduate and the graduate levels. It is the Jacqueline C. Fernandez, Gerald W. (Brooks and McLennan 1993, Poulin reason so many nonparasitologists, sitting Esch, and J. Richard Seed. Cambridge 1998, Combes 2001, Moore 2002). This on search committees and making deci­ University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2002. attests to the growth of interest in para­ sions about funding for basic research, 566 pp., illus. $130.00 (ISBN sitism, but none of those books is ap­ view parasitology as primarily a clinical 0521662788 cloth). propriate as an introductory text. The or pharmaceutical activity, and parasites trend adds to the disjunction between as bizarre evolutionary products having

any parasitologists who teach in Mundergraduate institutions lead a double life. In our classrooms we dutifully extol the virtues of the biomedical ap­ proach to parasitism, pandering to the premed students who provide the en­ rollment necessary to ensure that our administrators permit us to teach para­ sitology. And yet, when we teach gradu­ ate students and when we interact with our colleagues at meetings, we all ac­ knowledge that the glue that holds the discipline of parasitology together is the ecological-evolutionary nature of host-parasite associations. This is true for medical, veterinary, and wildlife dis­ ease parasitologists, just as it is for the sys­ tematists, ecologists, population biolo­ gists, developmental biologists, physiol­ ogists, and cell and molecular biologists. I have often heard parasitologists muse about teaching a different kind of un­ dergraduate course, one that would em­ phasize the basic diversity of parasites and then explain their associations from the ground up. Such a course would place the species of biomedical/veterinary/ wildlife disease importance in their proper evolutionary and ecological con­ text. Previous textbooks that attempted this task are long out of print, and the past decade has seen such an explosion of in­ terest in the evolutionary biology and ecology of parasites that most of those texts are outdated in any event. Most of us are barely able to keep up with ad­ vances in our own areas of specializa­ tion and find the task of distilling the information in those specialized texts into undergraduate teaching material daunting. A fair number of highly technical and scholarly texts on parasite ecology and

December 2002/ Vo l. 52 No. 12 • BioScience 1141 Brooks in BioScience (2002) 52. Copyright 2002, American Institute of Biological Sciences. Used by permission. Review of Parasitism: The Diversity and Ecology of Animal Parasites by Bush, Fernández, Esch & Seed (Cambridge University, 2002) Books little to offer general biology on their asites without adopting a fundamentally throughout all ecosystems, to such an own. Further, those nonparasitologists marcoevolutionary viewpoint-under­ extent that simply knowing the parasites who become fascinated with parasites standing both their evolutionary lega­ and their life cycles is sufficient to know and their possible influences on the evo­ cies (which explains, for example, why all much of the trophic structure of com­ lution of their hosts often have only a species of Schistosoma have similar life cy­ munities of free-living species. Parasites rudimentary appreciation for the diver­ cles and morphologies), as well as their influence, and are influenced by, the pop­ sity and complexity of parasites and their ecological interactions with their envi­ ulation biology and community ecology associations. ronments, most of which are other living of their hosts. They have long evolu­ The authors of this text have changed organisms. tionary histories of associations with an­ all that. They represent a "dream team" of Accordingly, the text of this book com­ cient and modern host groups, often re­ superstars, with superb credentials both prises two parts: In the first part, the au­ vealing aspects of the distant past, in­ in undergraduate teaching and in grad­ thors emphasize the diversity of the var­ cluding episodes of global climate change uate training and research. Three have ious major, and minor, parasite groups; and the drifting of continents. They are had the dubious honor of chairing an in the second part, they begin from first the very essence of Darwin's tangled bank. academic department at some point in principles and basic population biology. Parasites thus are intrinsically interesting their careers, after which writing a gen­ They proceed to describe the structure of to study not simply because they are eral textbook with only four authors must parasite diversity hierarchically from in­ have seemed quite peaceful. Two are fracommunities to component commu­ complex and beautiful but also because among the authors of one of the few par­ nities to compound communities. As they are such wonderful examples of asitology articles that has become a they do so, they weave in larger spatial many general evolutionary and ecologi­ Citation Index classic publication, a sem­ and temporal scales. cal principles. One could use this text to inal position paper setting out standard At the end of the book, the astute stu­ teach a general introductory evolution or terminology for important aspects of dent has glimpsed the enormous ecology course as well as a parasitology parasite ecology (Margolis et al. 1982). panorama of parasitism on a global scale. course. What these authors clearly compre­ Parasites are everywhere, inhabiting Finally, the student who uses this text hend is that one cannot understand par- everything. They are deeply embedded as part of an educational voyage of dis­ covery learns to think about parasitic disease in a new way. Evolutionary theory teaches us that all evolutionary changes are the summation of both costs and benefits, and many parasitic diseases in humans are part of the cost of civilization. Those species represent a relatively small percentage of all parasites, and they ex­ hibit very interesting yet in many ways atypical biology. We humans have created many of the conditions in which para­ sitism becomes parasitic disease; para­ doxically, we have produced an arms race between parasites and our technology that parallels the evolutionary arms race between many parasites and their hosts. In this parasitology text, the student comes to understand that the connec­ tion between parasitism and parasitic disease is ecological and highly contex­ tual. In my mind, this object lesson in hu­ mility is something that can benefit every student, but especially those intending a career in human or veterinary medicine.

DANIEL R. BROOKS Professor, Department of Zoology University of Toronto Toronto, ON M5S 3G5, Canada

1142 BioScience· December 2002 / Vol. 52 No. 12 Brooks in BioScience (2002) 52. Copyright 2002, American Institute of Biological Sciences. Used by permission. Review of Parasitism: The Diversity and Ecology of Animal Parasites by Bush, Fernández, Esch & Seed (Cambridge University, 2002) Books

References cited Brooks DR, McLennan DA. 1993. Parascript: Parasites and the Language of Evolution. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution Press. Combes C. 2001. Parasitism: The Ecology and Evolution of Intimate Interactions. De Buron I, Connors VA, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Margolis L, Esch GW, Holmes JC, Kuris AM, Schad GA. 1982. The use of ecological terms in par­ asitology. Journal of Parasitology 68: 131-133. Moore J. 2002. Parasites and the Behaviour of Animals. Oxford (United Kingdom): Oxford University Press. Poulin R. 1998. Evolutionary Ecology of Parasites. New York: Chapman and Hall.

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