{"title":"Parasites in marine food webs","authors":"K. Lafferty","doi":"10.5343/BMS.2011.1124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5343/BMS.2011.1124","url":null,"abstract":"Parasites have important and unique impacts on marine food webs. By infecting taxa across all trophic levels, parasites affect both bottom-up and top-down processes in marine systems. When host densities are high enough, parasites can regulate or even decimate their populations, causing regime shifts in marine systems. As consumers and resources, parasites are enmeshed in food webs in ways that are different from free-living species. Their unique lifestyle renders parasites more susceptible to perturbations than their free-living hosts. As a result, parasites serve as useful indicators of ecosystem integrity. A theory for how food webs affect parasites will help us better understand why a particular infectious disease has become problematic, give insight into how restoration might reduce a costly marine disease, or let us use parasites as indicators to follow changes in food-web complexity.","PeriodicalId":191310,"journal":{"name":"Marine Disease Ecology","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117080884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Future directions for marine disease research","authors":"R. V. Thurber","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198821632.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198821632.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Marine Disease Ecology synthesizes current work on disease in marine systems. Although we have learned a great deal about marine diseases, basic surveillance is difficult, disease mechanisms are complex, and general ecological principles are illusive. Fortunately, technology is no longer what thwarts our capabilities to sample and analyze individual samples for potential parasites, pathogens, or opportunists. Increasingly sophisticated advancements in remote sensing, molecular biology, computer technology, and data analytics open new avenues to study marine diseases. With such tools in place, we now need better surveillance, a quantitatively savvy workforce, and new visions that will produce clarity in how to understand, prevent, or mitigate marine diseases. Although we are making great strides, more holistic approaches can increase our reach in disease monitoring and disentangle the contextual interactions among hosts, their disease-causing agents, and the environment. Such new approaches will also allow us to look into the past, rediscover what we missed, and use this information to predict, and ideally prevent, the next outbreak in the ocean.","PeriodicalId":191310,"journal":{"name":"Marine Disease Ecology","volume":"176 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133971253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}