Ecology

This chapter discusses how ecology and ecological communities affect both the life-history and evolution of the parasite and the host. Ecological communities consist of populations of different species. Community ecology is an active area of ecological research that makes inquiries such as: what processes might be responsible for the coexistence, or mutual exclusion of species, and how can the number of species and the diversity of a community be explained? The chapter goes into the ecological communities of parasites, or parasite ecology, which have equivalent properties to those of hosts. The difference, however, is that only hosts represent a suitable environment for a parasite. The chapter looks at the characteristics of parasite communities, such as the ‘compound parasite community’, which is the community of all parasites in a given ecosystem.