Parasite Diversity & Evolution

Contrary to other animal groups the diversity of parasitic species is still largely ignored. At least one parasite species may exist for each of the known free-living species. Parasitologists continue to discover new species to science every day. The enormous work of characterizing and describing these new entities through taxonomy is still much needed. Our lab gathers a great deal of information about the parasite species out there, specially trematode and monogenean platyhelminths. We typically use morphology, molecular data and ecology to taxonomically describe new species. Such basic biodiversity information is very valuable to understand the current distribution and host specificity patterns of parasite species and to forecast how the changing climate and other perturbations of our environment may alter species distributions and host-parasite interactions in the future.