How to use natural history collections to resurrect information on historical parasite abundances

Abstract

Many of the most contentious questions that concern the ecology of helminths could be resolved with data on helminth abundance over the past few decades or centuries, but unfortunately these data are rare. A new sub-discipline – the historical ecology of parasitism – is resurrecting long-term data on the abundance of parasites, an advancement facilitated by the use of biological natural history collections. Because the world's museums hold billions of suitable specimens collected over more than a century, these potential parasitological datasets are broad in scope and finely resolved in taxonomic, temporal and spatial dimensions. Here, we set out best practices for the extraction of parasitological information from natural history collections, including how to conceive of a project, how to select specimens, how to engage curators and receive permission for proposed projects, standard operating protocols for dissections and how to manage data. Our hope is that other helminthologists will use this paper as a reference to expand their own research programmes along the dimension of time.

The practice of historical ecology: What, when, where, how and what for

“…Given the recent proliferation of historical-ecological research, we acknowledge that the 2019 cutoff for our data has excluded important research published since then (e.g. Stuessy 2020 ; Thurstan 2022 ; Armstrong et al 2022 ; Decocq 2022 ; Rivera-Collazo 2022 ; Whitaker et al 2023 ; Wood et al 2023 ). Given the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, this research, conducted before its onset, omits newer works.…”

Wildlife parasitology: sample collection and processing, diagnostic constraints, and methodological challenges in terrestrial carnivores

“…Absolute ethanol-fixated tissue fragments can be used for multiple DNA isolations and kept either at room temperature or in the freezer for long periods. This kind of conservation is mainly used for molecular investigations of parasites [ 194 ].…”

The role of systematics for understanding ecosystem functions: Proceedings of the Zoologica Scripta Symposium, Oslo, Norway, 25 August 2022

“…Their study showcases the promise that biodiversity infrastructure and in particular host collections hold for advancing parasite ecology (Wood & Vanhove, 2023) and disease research in general (Thompson et al, 2021) – a notion that garnered a lot of scientific and media attention in the context of COVID‐19. As collection‐based parasitology largely hinges on morphological parasite identification, it proves the importance of systematics in tackling timely ecological questions (Wood et al, 2023).…”