Parasites in food webs: the ultimate missing links

By K. Lafferty, Stefano Allesina, M. Arim, C. Briggs, G. D. De Leo, A. Dobson, Jennifer A. Dunne, Pieter T. J. Johnson, A. Kuris, D. Marcogliese and 8 more. Ecology Letters, 2008

909 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Parasitism is the most common consumer strategy among organisms, yet only recently has there been a call for the inclusion of infectious disease agents in food webs. The value of this effort hinges on whether parasites affect food-web properties. Increasing evidence suggests that parasites have the potential to uniquely alter food-web topology in terms of chain length, connectance and robustness. In addition, parasites might affect food-web stability, interaction strength and energy flow. Food-web structure also affects infectious disease dynamics because parasites depend on the ecological networks in which they live. Empirically, incorporating parasites into food webs is straightforward. We may start with existing food webs and add parasites as nodes, or we may try to build food webs around systems for which we already have a good understanding of infectious processes. In the future, perhaps researchers will add parasites while they construct food webs. Less clear is how food-web theory can accommodate parasites. This is a deep and central problem in theoretical biology and applied mathematics. For instance, is representing parasites with complex life cycles as a single node equivalent to representing other species with ontogenetic niche shifts as a single node? Can parasitism fit into fundamental frameworks such as the niche model? Can we integrate infectious disease models into the emerging field of dynamic food-web modelling? Future progress will benefit from interdisciplinary collaborations between ecologists and infectious disease biologists.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1cdcd7623ba24151ad15b314d27d5bc81daaac02

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Citations in the corpus

Freshwater food webs: towards a more fundamental understanding of biodiversity and community dynamics (2012, background): “In contrast to the meiofauna problem, the systematic inclusion of parasites, which represent a large part of the diversity and complexity of trophic interactions in any system, clearly is feasible and yields new insights (Lafferty et al., 2008).”
A global parasite conservation plan (2020, background): “In particular, many parasites play critical roles in ecosystems by contributing to biomass flow, food web connectivity, and population control, and by driving the evolution of other species (Dunne et al., 2013; Hudson et al., 2006; Kuris et al., 2008; Lafferty et al., 2008; Sato et al., 2011).”
Chytrid infections and diatom spring blooms: paradoxical effects of climate warming on fungal epidemics in lakes (2011, background): “Shifting parasitism – effects on higher trophic levels Although their impact is still undervalued, it is becoming clear that parasites strongly influence the structure, dynamics, stability and function of food webs (review by Lafferty et al., 2008).”
Under niche construction: an operational bridge between ecology, evolution, and ecosystem science (2014, background): “2A) and provide some of the best empirical examples of how organisms can modify their biotic environment (Holt and Lawton 1994, Lafferty et al. 2008).”
Diversity and functions of microscopic fungi: a missing component in pelagic food webs (2010, background): “The introduction of parasitism in food-web investigations is thus essential information (Marcogliese and Cone 1997; Wood 2007; Lafferty et al. 2008; Byers 2009), potentially representing a source of new knowledge and enhanced understanding in the context of aquatic microbial ecology.”
The ecology and emergence of diseases in fresh waters (2011, background): “Collectively, pathogens with aquatic and terrestrial stages or hosts also represent significant trophic linkages between these ecosystems with potentially important effects on food web properties (Lafferty et al., 2008; Amundsen et al., 2009).”
Ecosystem consequences of fish parasites (2008, background): “Parasites are small, difficult to study and little studied compared to free-living predators (Lafferty et al., 2008).”