ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
The ghost of hosts past: impacts of host extinction on parasite specificity.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Host Abundance Predicts Interactive Roles in Neotropical Bat-Bat Fly Interactions.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Host body size, not host population size, predicts genome-wide effective population size of parasites.Evolution letters · 2023Article
- Trapped in time.eLife · 2023Article
- Mussel parasite richness and risk of extinction.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2022Article
- Forecasting parasite sharing under climate change.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Infectious disease macroecology: parasite diversity and dynamics across the globe.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Identifying co-phylogenetic hotspots for zoonotic disease.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Phanerozoic parasitism and marine metazoan diversity: dilution versus amplification.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A growing body of research is focused on the extinction of parasite species in response to host endangerment and declines. Beyond the loss of parasite species richness, host extinction can impact apparent parasite host specificity, as measured by host richness or the phylogenetic distances among hosts. Such impacts on the distribution of parasites across the host phylogeny can have knock-on effects that may reshape the adaptation of both hosts and parasites, ultimately shifting the evolutionary landscape underlying the potential for emergence and the evolution of virulence across hosts. Here, we examine how the reshaping of host phylogenies through extinction may impact the host specificity of parasites, and offer examples from historical extinctions, present-day endangerment, and future projections of biodiversity loss. We suggest that an improved understanding of the impact of host extinction on contemporary host-parasite interactions may shed light on core aspects of disease ecology, including comparative studies of host specificity, virulence evolution in multi-host parasite systems, and future trajectories for host and parasite biodiversity. This article is part of the theme issue 'Infectious disease macroecology: parasite diversity and dynamics across the globe'.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.