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Host specificity and the probability of discovering species of helminth parasites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2005

R. POULIN  and
D. MOUILLOT
R. POULIN
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand
D. MOUILLOT
Affiliation:
UMR CNRS-UMII 5119 Ecosystèmes Lagunaires, Université Montpellier II, CC 093, 34095 Montpellier cedex 5, France
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Abstract

Different animal species have different probabilities of being discovered and described by scientists, and these probabilities are determined to a large extent by the biological characteristics of these species. For instance, species with broader geographical ranges are more likely to be encountered by collectors than species with restricted distributions; indeed, the size of the geographical range is often the best predictor of a species' date of description. For parasitic organisms, host specificity may be similarly linked to the probability of a species being found. Here, using data on 170 helminth species parasitic in freshwater fishes, we show that host specificity is associated with the year in which the helminths were described. Helminths that exploit more host species, and to a lesser degree those that exploit a broader taxonomic range of host species, tend to be discovered earlier than the more host-specific helminths. This pattern was observed across all helminth species, as well as within the different helminth taxa (trematodes, cestodes, nematodes and acanthocephalans). Our results demonstrate that the parasite species known at any given point in time are not a random subset of existing species, but rather a biased subset with respect to the parasites' biological properties.

Keywords

freshwater fishhost specificitytaxonomic distinctnessyear of description
Type
Research Article
Information
Parasitology , Volume 130 , Issue 6 , June 2005 , pp. 709 - 715
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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