Parasite Ecology Papers to Read While Stuck at Home During the Pandemic

Many people are having a hard time being productive right now, and that’s OK! If you do not have the time, quiet, or mental fortitude to keep up with the scientific literature, that is completely understandable. But sometimes reading papers can be a productive distraction from other, big work tasks that are especially difficult to tackle when you’re not 100% on your game. And when they’re good, reading papers can be fun and inspiring! So I’ve started curating a list of disease ecology, parasite ecology, and parasitology papers that were published thus far in 2020. If I’ve missed any great papers, please let me know, and I’ll add them!

Evolution:

Clonemate cotransmission supports a role for kin selection in a puppeteer parasite (This is AMAZING and I need to blog it.)

Recovery from infection is more likely to favour the evolution of migration than social escape from infection

Ecosystem-level papers:

Parasitism in ecosystem engineer species: a key factor controlling marine ecosystem functioning

Does deforestation increase malaria prevalence? Evidence from satellite data and health surveys

An Empirical Test of the Role of Small-Scale Transmission in Large-Scale Disease Dynamics

Towards common ground in the biodiversity-disease debate

Community- and population-level papers:  

Urbanization and translocation disrupt the relationship between host density and parasite abundance

Viral zoonotic risk is homogenous among taxonomic orders of mammalian and avian reservoir hosts

Ecological and evolutionary drivers of hemoplasma infection and bacterial genotype sharing in a Neotropical bat community

The Road Not Taken: Host Infection Status Influences Parasite Host-Choice

Environmental reservoir dynamics predict global infection patterns and population impacts for the fungal disease white-nose syndrome

Tracking the assembly of nested parasite communities: Using beta-diversity to understand variation in parasite richness and composition over time and scale

It’s a wormy world: Meta-analysis reveals several decades of change in the global abundance of the parasitic nematodes Anisakis spp. and Pseudoterranova spp. in marine fishes and invertebrates

Ecological consequences of parasite host shifts under changing environments: More than a change of partner

Systematic review of modelling assumptions and empirical evidence: Does parasite transmission increase nonlinearly with host density? (Are shameless plugs allowed?)

Deer, wolves, and people: costs, benefits and challenges of living together

Within-host processes or organism-level papers:

Concomitant Immunity and Worm Senescence May Drive Schistosomiasis Epidemiological Patterns: An Eco-Evolutionary Perspective

Parasite Infection Leads to Widespread Glucocorticoid Hormone Increases in Vertebrate Hosts: A Meta-Analysis

Characterization of viruses in a tapeworm: phylogenetic position, vertical transmission, and transmission to the parasitized host