Sampling Effort and Parasite Species Richness

Metazoan parasite species richness and genetic variation among freshwater fish species: cause or consequence?

“…We excluded protozoan parasites, because they are only recorded from ®sh species that have been the subject of detailed surveys; their occurrence is therefore poorly known for most ®sh species. The species richness of the metazoan parasite fauna of a given ®sh species is to some extent dependent on how much e ort has gone into studying that ®sh: on average, more parasites are known from intensely-studied host species than from poorly-studied ones [22,23]. To control for variability in study e ort among host species, we used the average number of articles published per year on each ®sh species over a 10 year period (1984±1993), obtained from Cvancara's compilations [24], as an independent index of our relative knowledge of each ®sh species.…”

Host correlates of diversification in avian lice

“…One particular problem is the sensitivity of parasite richness measures to sampling bias. Most of the parasite species living on poorly sampled hosts are probably left unnoticed (Walther et al, 1995) and, paradoxically, even an equal sampling across host species may cause sampling bias. Being all else equal, a host harbouring more aggregated parasite infections has to be sampled more intensively than another host with less aggregated infections in order to explore their parasite faunae to the same level (Rékási et al, 1997).…”

Community structure and the spread of infectious disease in primate social networks

“…either the parasite does not occur in the host, or the host has not been sampled sufficiently (Walther et al 1995). For this reason, we estimate the total research effort that has been directed at a given primate host species by counting the number of publications involving that species.…”