ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2020
What would it take to describe the global diversity of parasites?
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers.
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Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed.
- Diversity of endohelminth parasites of fish from Sali-Dulce River tributary (Tucumán province, Northwestern Argentina).Acta parasitologica · 2026Article
- Hunting for Helminths: short- and long-read shotgun metagenomics for helminth detection in faecal samples.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2026Article
- Long-term trends in parasite diversity and infection levels: approaches and patterns.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- A course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) designed for modern genetics and biodiversity courses using a classroom benchtop sequencer.Journal of microbiology & biology education · 2026Article
- Bridging knowledge gaps in two trematode life cycles: insights from southern African freshwater ecosystems.International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2026Review
- Anuran amphibian Hemoparasites over the Last Century: Advances, Challenges, and Future Prospects: A Systematic Review.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Occurrence of brachylaimid trematodes, alive and shell-trapped, in sympatric species of terrestrial gastropods in France.Parasite (Paris, France) · 2026Article
- Genome-Wide Protein Interaction Analysis in Parasitic Gyrodactylus Flatworms-Fish Hosts System and Drug Target Identification.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Host Co-Occurrence and Population Size Explain Genetic Differentiation and Diversity in Seal Lice.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Intermediate insights: tracing trematodes infecting amphibians via their first intermediate snail hosts.Parasites & vectors · 2025Article
- Geographic variation in the determinants of ectoparasite faunas' species richness: fleas and gamasid mites parasitic on small mammals from 6 biogeographic realms.Parasitology · 2025Article
- Haemosporidian and trypanosomatid diversity in a high-latitude island ecosystem, including the first record of Zelonia in the Nearctic.Parasitology research · 2025Article
- Validating a web application's use of genetic distance to determine helminth species boundaries and aid in identification.BMC bioinformatics · 2025Article
- Do Faster-Growing Holoparasitic Plant Species Exhibit Broader Niches and Wider Global Distributions?Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Anthelmintic Activity of Stonefish (Toxins · 2025Article
- Pathogens and planetary change.Nature reviews. Biodiversity · 2025Article
- Cichlid fishes are promising underutilized models to investigate helminth-host-microbiome interactions.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Review
- Parasites of the hermit crab Pagurus hirsutiusculus; distribution, prevalence, and thermal ecology.PloS one · 2025Article
- Ectoparasites of the Critically Endangered Giant Shovelnose Ray Glaucostegus typus in the Eastern Indian Ocean, with a Summary of the Known Metazoan Parasites.Acta parasitologica · 2024Article
- Ecology and phenology of the bat tickParasitology · 2024Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
How many parasites are there on Earth? Here, we use helminth parasites to highlight how little is known about parasite diversity, and how insufficient our current approach will be to describe the full scope of life on Earth. Using the largest database of host-parasite associations and one of the world's largest parasite collections, we estimate a global total of roughly 100 000-350 000 species of helminth endoparasites of vertebrates, of which 85-95% are unknown to science. The parasites of amphibians and reptiles remain the most poorly described, but the majority of undescribed species are probably parasites of birds and bony fish. Missing species are disproportionately likely to be smaller parasites of smaller hosts in undersampled countries. At current rates, it would take centuries to comprehensively sample, collect and name vertebrate helminths. While some have suggested that macroecology can work around existing data limitations, we argue that patterns described from a small, biased sample of diversity aren't necessarily reliable, especially as host-parasite networks are increasingly altered by global change. In the spirit of moonshots like the Human Genome Project and the Global Virome Project, we consider the idea of a Global Parasite Project: a global effort to transform parasitology and inventory parasite diversity at an unprecedented pace.
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