Fossils of parasites: what can the fossil record tell us about the evolution of parasitism?

Leung, Tommy L. F.

doi:10.1111/brv.12238

Cited by 58 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 293 publications

(366 reference statements)

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“…It may come as a surprise to many ecologists that parasites themselves are sometimes fossilized (Leung ). For example, the remains of putative hooks of flatworms, possibly of species within the Monogenea or Cestoda, have been reported in the fossilized bodies of Devonian juvenile fish (Upeniece ), and a 44‐million‐year‐old fossil louse collected in Germany is so well preserved that bird feather barbules are visible in its foregut (Figure ; Wappler et al .…”

Section: Archaeo‐ and Paleoparasitologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Parasites lost: using natural history collections to track disease change across deep time

Harmon

Littlewood

Wood

2019

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

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Recent decades have brought countless outbreaks of infectious disease among wildlife. These events appear to be increasing in frequency and magnitude, but to objectively evaluate whether ecosystems are experiencing rising rates of disease, scientists require historical data on disease abundance. Specimens held in natural history collections represent a chronological archive of life on Earth and may, in many cases, be the only available source of data on historical disease patterns. It is possible to extract information on past disease rates by studying trace fossils (indirect fossilized evidence of an organism's presence or activity, including coprolites or feces), sequencing ancient DNA of parasites, and examining sediment samples, mummified remains, study skins (preserved animal skins prepared by taxidermy for research purposes), liquid‐preserved hosts, and hosts preserved in amber. Such use of natural history collections could expand scientific understanding of parasite responses to environmental change across deep time (that is, over the past several centuries), facilitating the development of baselines for managing contemporary wildlife disease.

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Section: Archaeo‐ and Paleoparasitologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Parasites lost: using natural history collections to track disease change across deep time

Harmon

Littlewood

Wood

2019

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

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“…Pearl formation, however, can have a variety of causes, many of which are not due to parasites (Lauckner 1983). For example, De Baets et al (2011) reported pearls in ammonoid shells that do not match with the patterns modern digeneans leave in bivalve shells (Lauckner 1983;Cremonte 2004;Leung 2017, see also Huntley and De Baets 2015).…”

Section: Parasitismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although difficult to detect, because parasites are often very small and soft bodied, it is even more complicated to identify the parasite after its soft body has decomposed (Conway Morris 1981;De Baets et al 2015b;Leung 2017). This largely depends on the fact that different parasites can lead to similar reactions of the host due to convergence in the evolution of host exploitation strategies (Littlewood and Donovan 2003;De Baets et al 2015b;Leung 2017).…”

Section: Parasitismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Traumatic events in the life of the deep-sea cephalopod mollusc, the coleoid Spirula spirula

Hoffmann

Lemanis

Wulff

et al. 2018

Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers

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Here, we report on different types of shell pathologies of the enigmatic deep-sea (mesopelagic) cephalopod Spirula spirula. For the first time, we apply non-invasive imaging methods to: document trauma-induced changes in shell shapes, reconstruct the different causes and effects of these pathologies, unravel the etiology, and attempt to quantify the efficiency of the buoyancy apparatus. We have analysed 2D and 3D shell parameters from eleven shells collected as beach findings from the Canary Islands (Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura), West-Australia, and the Maldives. All shells were scanned with a nanotomm computer tomograph. Seven shells were likely injured by predator attacks: fishes, cephalopods or crustaceans, one specimen was infested by an endoparasite (potentially Digenea) and one shell shows signs of inflammation and one shell shows large fluctuations of chamber volumes without any signs of pathology. These fluctuations are potential indicators of a stressed environment. Pathological shells represent the most deviant morphologies of a single species and can therefore be regarded as morphological end-members. The changes in the shell volume / chamber volume ratio were assessed in order to evaluate the functional tolerance of the buoyancy apparatus showing that these had little effect.

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“…This is especially true for viruses, bacteria and unicellular eukaryotes but also applies to parasitic metazoans. For this reason the fossil record has often been overlooked in the study of parasite evolution, although evidence of parasitism in deep time is perhaps more extensive than many researchers have assumed (Conway Morris, 1981;De Baets and Littlewood, 2015;Leung, 2017).…”

Section: The Fossil Record Of Parasites As a Source Of Calibrationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Two issues that make the application of the molecular clock challenging to apply in reality are that (1) rates of molecular evolution are often non-constant, and (2) calibrations are rarely known very precisely. In general, these issues also become increasingly problematic further back in time, and as we go into detail in the following sections may be particularly problematic in the case of many parasites, which are soft-bodied, microscopic and reside within their hosts (Littlewood and Donovan, 2003;De Baets and Littlewood, 2015;Leung, 2017).3…”

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confidence: 99%

The molecular clock as a tool for understanding host-parasite evolution

Warnock¹,

Engelstädter²

2020

Preprint

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The molecular clock in combination with evidence from the geological record can be applied to infer the timing and dynamics of evolutionary events. This has enormous potential to shed light on the complex and often evasive evolution of parasites. Here, we provide an overview of molecular clock methodology and recent advances that increase the potential for the study of host-parasite coevolutionary dynamics, with a focus on Bayesian approaches to divergence time estimation. We highlight the challenges in applying these methods to the study of parasites, including the nature of parasite genomes, the incompleteness of the rock and fossil records, and the complexity of hostparasite interactions. Developments in models of molecular evolution and approaches to deriving temporal constraints from geological evidence will help overcome some of these issues. However, 1 we also describe a case study in which the timescale of host-parasite coevolution cannot easily be inferred using existing methods -that of the alpha-proteobacteria Wolbachia. We conclude by providing a prospective on future methodological developments and data collection that will facilitate in understanding the role of parasitism in deep time. IntroductionA timeline for events throughout geological history is required to address many questions in evolutionary biology, including establishing the sequence of key evolutionary transitions and assessing the role of environmental and evolutionary variables on the evolution of life (Rota-Stabelli et al., 2013;Betts et al., 2018;Morris et al., 2018;Silvestro et al., 2018). Due to the paucity of rocks from different time periods and environments, and the low fossilisation potential of many soft-bodied species, we cannot rely on the fossil record to establish this timeline very precisely (Benton et al., 2009; Parham et al., 2011;Holland, 2016). The genomes of living species provide an alternative source of evidence for inferring the sequence of events in deep time, although in themselves they provide no information about absolute time. Phylogenetic methods that enable us to leverage both sources of evidence simultaneously provide the most promising approach for generating a more precise timeline and a richer view of the past than either record can provide alone (Donoghue and Benton, 2007;Landis, 2017;Álvarez-Carretero et al., 2019).It is estimated that more than half of all living species are parasites (Windsor, 1998;Bass et al., 2015), that is, species that rely on a host organism for survival, at the expense of the other species.The ubiquity of the parasitic lifestyle and the often strong selection pressure imposed by parasites on their hosts (Hughes et al., 2012) indicate that parasites have played an important role in shaping the evolution of life, but the challenge in detecting many parasite species, both now and in the past, suggest that this role is not well understood (Dobson et al., 2008;De Baets and Littlewood, 2015). Estimating the time of origin of parasitism across different groups enables us to answer ...

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Fossils of parasites: what can the fossil record tell us about the evolution of parasitism?

Cited by 58 publications

References 293 publications

Parasites lost: using natural history collections to track disease change across deep time

Parasites lost: using natural history collections to track disease change across deep time

Traumatic events in the life of the deep-sea cephalopod mollusc, the coleoid Spirula spirula

The molecular clock as a tool for understanding host-parasite evolution

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