Main description:

This two-volume edited book highlights and reviews the potential of the fossil record to calibrate the origin and evolution of parasitism, and the techniques to understand the development of parasite-host associations and their relationships with environmental and ecological changes. The book deploys a broad and comprehensive approach, aimed at understanding the origins and developments of various parasite groups, in order to provide a wider evolutionary picture of parasitism as part of biodiversity. This is in contrast to most contributions by parasitologists in the literature that focus on circular lines of evidence, such as extrapolating from current host associations or distributions, to estimate constraints on the timing of the origin and evolution of various parasite groups. This approach is narrow and fails to provide the wider evolutionary picture of parasitism on, and as part of, biodiversity.
Volume two focuses on the importance of direct host associations and host responses such as pathologies in the geological record to constrain the role of antagonistic interactions in driving the diversification and extinction of parasite-host relationships and disease. To better understand the impact on host populations, emphasis is given to arthropods, colonial metazoans, echinoderms, mollusks and vertebrates as hosts. In addition, novel techniques used to constrain interactions in deep time are discussed ranging from chemical and microscopic investigations of host remains, such as blood and coprolites, to the statistical inference of lateral transfer of transposons and host-parasite coevolutionary dynamics using molecular divergence time estimation.

Contents:

5. Co-divergence and host responsea. Parasite-induced traces and pathologies: General => Kenneth De Baets and John Huntleyb. Plants as hosts (galls etc.) => Torsten Wappler c. Colonial organisms as hosts => Olev Vinnd. Crustaceans as hosts => Adiel Klompmakere. Insects as hosts and vectors => Torsten Wappler, George Poinar, Tony Martinf. Molluscs as hosts i. Cephalopods as hosts => Kenneth De Baets and Helmut Keupp ii. Bivalves as hosts => John Huntley iii. Gastropod as hosts => Curt Lively, Armand Kuris, Kevin Lafferty, Robert Pouling. Echinoderms as hosts => Carlton Bretth. Vertebrates as hosts => Bruce Rotschildi. Coprolites as a source of parasite remains => Karen Chin
6. Type of data and techniques a. Paleoparasitology techniques => Adauto Araujob. Thin sectio^ Russell Garwoodc. Biomolecules => Derek Briggs i. Ancient DNA and Proteins => Jamie Wood ii. Blood => Dale Greenwalt d. Molecular perspectives i. Molecular clocks => Rachel Warnock ii. HGT and "parasitic" DNA => Georgios Koutsovoulos