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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Evolution In Action: Climate Change, Biodiversity Dynamics And Emerging Infectious Disease, Eric P. Hoberg, Daniel R. Brooks Jan 2015

Evolution In Action: Climate Change, Biodiversity Dynamics And Emerging Infectious Disease, Eric P. Hoberg, Daniel R. Brooks

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty and Staff Publications

Climatological variation and ecological perturbation have been pervasive drivers of faunal assembly, structure and diversification for parasites and pathogens through recurrent events of geographical and host colonization at varying spatial and temporal scales of Earth history. Episodic shifts in climate and environmental settings, in conjunction with ecological mechanisms and host switching, are often critical determinants of parasite diversification, a view counter to more than a century of coevolutionary thinking about the nature of complex host–parasite assemblages. Parasites are resource specialists with restricted host ranges, yet shifts onto relatively unrelated hosts are common during phylogenetic diversification of parasite lineages and directly …


In The Eye Of The Cyclops: The Classic Case Of Cospeciation And Why Paradigms Are Important, Daniel R. Brooks, Eric P. Hoberg, Walter A. Boeger Jan 2015

In The Eye Of The Cyclops: The Classic Case Of Cospeciation And Why Paradigms Are Important, Daniel R. Brooks, Eric P. Hoberg, Walter A. Boeger

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty and Staff Publications

Scientific disagreements due to empirical problems—not enough data, not enough of the critical type of data, problems in analyzing the data—are generally short-lived and resolved in the next cycle of data production. Such disagreements are thus transitory in nature. Persistent scientific conflicts, on the other hand, do not necessarily mean some facts are correct and some are wrong, nor do they mean that we do not have enough information. More often, such persistent conflicts mean that the conceptual frameworks used by different groups of researchers are insufficient to resolve apparent conflicts in the data. The latter seems to be the …


Return To Beringia: Parasites Reveal Cryptic Biogeographic History Of North American Pikas, Kurt E. Galbreath, Eric P. Hoberg Jan 2012

Return To Beringia: Parasites Reveal Cryptic Biogeographic History Of North American Pikas, Kurt E. Galbreath, Eric P. Hoberg

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty and Staff Publications

Traditional concepts of the Bering Land Bridge as a zone of predominantly eastward expansion from Eurasia and a staging area for subsequent colonization of lower latitudes in North America led to early inferences regarding biogeographic histories of North American faunas, many of which remain untested. Here we apply a host–parasite comparative phylogeographical (HPCP) approach to evaluate one such history, by testing competing biogeographic hypotheses for five lineages of host-specific parasites shared by the collared pika (Ochotona collaris) and American pika (Ochotona princeps) of North America. We determine whether the southern host species (O. princeps) …


How Specialists Can Be Generalists: Resolving The "Parasite Paradox" And Implications For Emerging Infectious Disease, Salvatore J. Agosta, Niklas Janz, Daniel R. Brooks Jan 2010

How Specialists Can Be Generalists: Resolving The "Parasite Paradox" And Implications For Emerging Infectious Disease, Salvatore J. Agosta, Niklas Janz, Daniel R. Brooks

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty and Staff Publications

The parasite paradox arises from the dual observations that parasites (broadly construed, including phytophagous insects) are resource specialists with restricted host ranges, and yet shifts onto relatively unrelated hosts are common in the phylogenetic diversification of parasite lineages and directly observable in ecological time. We synthesize the emerging solution to this paradox: phenotypic flexibility and phylogenetic conservatism in traits related to resource use, grouped under the term ecological fitting, provide substantial opportunities for rapid host switching in changing environments, in the absence of the evolution of novel host-utilization capabilities. We discuss mechanisms behind ecological fitting, its implications for defining specialists …


Ecological Fitting As A Determinant Of The Community Structure Of Platyhelminth Parasites Of Anurans, Daniel R. Brooks, Virginia León-Règagnon, Deborah A. Mclennan, Derek Zelmer Jul 2006

Ecological Fitting As A Determinant Of The Community Structure Of Platyhelminth Parasites Of Anurans, Daniel R. Brooks, Virginia León-Règagnon, Deborah A. Mclennan, Derek Zelmer

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty and Staff Publications

Host-parasite associations are assumed to be ecologically specialized, tightly coevolved systems driven by mutual modification in which host switching is a rare phenomenon. Ecological fitting, however, increases the probability of host switching, creating incongruences between host and parasite phylogenies, when (1) specialization on a particular host resource is a shared characteristic of distantly related parasites, and (2) the resource being tracked by the parasite is widespread among many host species. We investigated the effect of ecological fitting on structuring the platyhelminth communities of anurans from a temperate forest and grassland in the United States and tropical dry and wet forests …


Beringia: Intercontinental Exchange And Diversification Of High Latitude Mammals And Their Parasites During The Pliocene And Quarternary, Joseph A. Cook, Eric P. Hoberg, Anson Koehler, Heikki Henttonen, Lotta Wickström, Voitto Haukisalmi, Kurt Galbreath, Felix Chernyavski, Nikolai Dokuchaev, Anatoli Lahzuhtkin, Stephen O. Macdonald, Andrew Hope, Eric Waltari, Amy Runck, Alasdair Veitch, Richard Popko, Emily Jenkins, Susan Kutz, Ralph Eckerlin Jan 2005

Beringia: Intercontinental Exchange And Diversification Of High Latitude Mammals And Their Parasites During The Pliocene And Quarternary, Joseph A. Cook, Eric P. Hoberg, Anson Koehler, Heikki Henttonen, Lotta Wickström, Voitto Haukisalmi, Kurt Galbreath, Felix Chernyavski, Nikolai Dokuchaev, Anatoli Lahzuhtkin, Stephen O. Macdonald, Andrew Hope, Eric Waltari, Amy Runck, Alasdair Veitch, Richard Popko, Emily Jenkins, Susan Kutz, Ralph Eckerlin

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty and Staff Publications

Beringia is the region spanning eastern Asia and northwestern North America that remained ice-free during the full glacial events of the Pleistocene. Numerous questions persist regarding the importance of this region in the evolution of northern faunas. Beringia has been implicated as both a high latitude refugium and as the crossroads (Bering Land Bridge) of the northern continents for boreal mammals. The Beringian Coevolution Project (BCP) is an international collaboration that has provided material to assess the pattern and timing of faunal exchange across the crossroads of the northern continents and the potential impact of past climatic events on differentiation. …


Parasites As Probes For Biodiversity, Scott Lyell Gardner, Mariel L. Campbell Aug 1992

Parasites As Probes For Biodiversity, Scott Lyell Gardner, Mariel L. Campbell

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Faculty and Staff Publications

Cestodes of the genus Linstowia, parasitic in marsupials, show patterns of coevolution and ancient historical-ecological connections. Correlated with the breakup of the austral landmasses (Gondwanaland) of the Neotropical and Australian regions from the Antarctic continent, the age of this host-parasite community is estimated to be between 60 and 70 million years old. Based on the data from the survey of parasites of mammals from throughout Bolivia and from the phylogenetic analysis of the cestodes, we urge the planners of biodiversity preserves in the neotropics to consider the Yungas of Bolivia as a region that supports an ancient ecological community …