Is the world wormier than it used to be? We'll never know without natural history collections
Is the world wormier than it used to be? We'll never know without natural history collections
复制标题
世界比过去虫子更多了吗？没有自然历史标本收藏我们永远不会知道。
DOI：
10.1111/1365-2656.13794
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发表时间：
2022-09-12
影响因子：
4.8
通讯作者：
Vanhove，Maarten P. M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Wood，Chelsea L.;Vanhove，Maarten P. M.
许多疾病生态学家和保护生物学家认为，世界比过去更糟糕--也就是说，随着时间的推移，寄生虫的数量正在增加。这一论点直觉上很有吸引力。生态学家通常通过与疾病的联系将寄生虫感染视为负面终点，并习惯于将负面结果归因于人类对环境的干预，因此它恰好符合我们的世界观，即栖息地破坏、生物多样性丧失和气候变化应该伴随着导致寄生虫爆发的附带后果。但令人惊讶的是，寄生虫随着时间的推移不断增加的假设对于绝大多数野生动物寄生虫物种来说仍然完全未经检验。关于寄生虫的历史数据几乎不可能找到，这就没有留下基线来比较当代寄生虫的负担。如果我们想知道世界是否比过去更糟糕，只有一个主要的研究途径可以带来答案：对保存在自然历史收藏品中的标本进行寄生虫学检查。最近的进展表明，对于许多标本类型，有可能提取关于寄生虫存在和丰度的可靠数据。世界各地的收藏品中都有数以百万计的合适标本。当与当时的环境数据配对时，这些寄生虫学数据甚至可以指出寄生虫丰度变化的潜在驱动因素，包括气候、污染或宿主密度变化。我们解释了如何使用保存的标本来解决寄生虫生态学中的紧迫问题，给出了几个基于收集的寄生虫生态学如何解决这些问题的关键例子，找出了一些陷阱和解决办法，并提出了有前景的研究领域。自然历史标本是“寄生虫的时间胶囊”，它让生态学家有机会测试传染病是否在增加，并确定随着时间的推移，可能是什么力量推动了这些变化。这种方法将促进一个新的分支学科的重大进展：寄生虫学的历史生态学。
Many disease ecologists and conservation biologists believe that the world is wormier than it used to be—that is, that parasites are increasing in abundance through time. This argument is intuitively appealing. Ecologists typically see parasitic infections, through their association with disease, as a negative endpoint, and are accustomed to attributing negative outcomes to human interference in the environment, so it slots neatly into our worldview that habitat destruction, biodiversity loss and climate change should have the collateral consequence of causing outbreaks of parasites.But surprisingly, the hypothesis that parasites are increasing in abundance through time remains entirely untested for the vast majority of wildlife parasite species. Historical data on parasites are nearly impossible to find, which leaves no baseline against which to compare contemporary parasite burdens. If we want to know whether the world is wormier than it used to be, there is only one major research avenue that will lead to an answer: parasitological examination of specimens preserved in natural history collections.Recent advances demonstrate that, for many specimen types, it is possible to extract reliable data on parasite presence and abundance. There are millions of suitable specimens that exist in collections around the world. When paired with contemporaneous environmental data, these parasitological data could even point to potential drivers of change in parasite abundance, including climate, pollution or host density change.We explain how to use preserved specimens to address pressing questions in parasite ecology, give a few key examples of how collections‐based parasite ecology can resolve these questions, identify some pitfalls and workarounds, and suggest promising areas for research. Natural history specimens are ‘parasite time capsules’ that give ecologists the opportunity to test whether infectious disease is on the rise and to identify what forces might be driving these changes over time. This approach will facilitate major advances in a new sub‐discipline: the historical ecology of parasitism.