Module 1 homework

Homework problems

(feel free to copy and paste these over to another file and write your answers below each question)

  1. What are the different ways we can estimate parasite diversity?

  2. Clearly distinguish concepts of ‘diversity’ from ‘specificity’

  3. What parasite group would likely have the lowest specificity, and why? In your answer, discuss parasite life history differences that are relevant to specificity.

  4. A botfly lays an egg inside the skin of it’s host. The egg then develops into an adult and emerges from the host. The host survives. Discuss your reasoning for which of the six parasite strategies would the botfly fall into.

  5. Describe specialism-generalism tradeoffs. In class, we showed limited evidence for them. Provide a citation which does find support for specialism-generalism tradeoffs, and discuss the differences from the examples in class.

  6. What is the role of stochasticity in Red Queen dynamics?

  7. Poulin described a clear relationship between structural specificity and phylogenetic specificity. Why were the two negatively related?

  8. Eric LoPresti loves pandas. He travels the world and samples pandas for their parasites. Which of the following can Eric estimate based on his data? (Parasite host range, parasite species richness). Eric finds a lot of variation in parasite communities at both infracommunity and component community levels and across geographic space. Discuss where this variation could come from.

  9. Fish that are infected with a gill parasite tend to swim closer to the surface of the water, making them more susceptible to predation. However, studies have found that exposure to UV increases parasite mortality. Discuss what could be happening here through the lens of both host and parasite.

  10. Describe how the environment might influence resistance-tolerance strategies of a host. Also discuss the influence of the timing of infection during a host’s lifespan and how that might influence resistance-tolerance strategy.

  11. A host can be infected by two different parasites. Design an experiment that will test for immune-mediated interactions between the two parasites. Both parasites occupy the host intestine. How will this potentially change your experimental design?

  12. Describe some situations (hypothetical or real) where Red Queen dynamics don’t result in reciprocal co-evolution.