ArticleBiology letters2019
Facultative parasites as evolutionary stepping-stones towards parasitic lifestyles.
Article in Biology letters, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effects of a 12-Year Nitrogen Addition Experiment on Protist Communities in a Boreal Forest, Heilongjiang Province, China.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Origins and Diversification of Myiasis Across Blowflies.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Theoretical Study of Sphingomyelinases fromPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Co-habiting ants and silverfish display a converging feeding ecology.BMC biology · 2024Article
- To live free or being a parasite: The optimal foraging behavior may favor the evolution of entomopathogenic nematodes.PloS one · 2024Article
- Mitogenomic evolutionary rates in bilateria are influenced by parasitic lifestyle and locomotory capacity.Nature communications · 2023Article
- A roadmap towards predicting species interaction networks (across space and time).Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- First report of a gastropod parasitic nematodeJournal of nematology · 2020Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Parasites and parasitic lifestyles have evolved from free-living organisms multiple times. How such a key evolutionary transition occurred remains puzzling. Facultative parasites represent potential transitional states between free-living and fully parasitic lifestyles because they can be either free-living or parasitic depending on environmental conditions. We suggest that facultative parasites with phenotypically plastic life-history strategies may serve as evolutionary stepping-stones towards obligate parasitism. Pre-adaptations provide a starting point for the transition towards opportunistic or facultative parasitism, but what evolutionary mechanism underlies the transition from facultative to obligate parasitism? In this Opinion Piece, we outline how facultative parasites could evolve towards obligate parasites via genetic assimilation, either alone or in combination with the Baldwin effect. We further describe the key predictions stemming from each of these evolutionary pathways. The importance of genetic assimilation in evolution has been hotly debated. Studies on facultative parasites may not only provide key insights regarding the evolution of parasitism, but also provide ideal systems in which to test evolutionary theory on genetic accommodation.
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