Parasite-Host Associations

Abstract This book is a result of the 9th International Congress of Comparative Physiology, sponsored by the Interunion of Comparative Physiologists. These conferences have covered a wide range of topics, but aIJ were devoted to interdisciplinary exchange. Accordingly, topics were chosen by the Interunion that not only lent themselves to an interdisciplinary approach but were ripe for one. Parasitism, the topic chosen for the 9th Congress, has recently enjoyed a resurgence of interest among ecologists and evolutionary biologists (cf. Loye, J. E. and Zuk, M. (ed.) 1991, Bird-Parasite Interactions: Ecology, Evolution, and Behaviour, Oxford University Press). As several authors in Sections I and TT emphasize, understanding of natural parasitehost systems is hampered by too little information on the physiological and immunological interactions between parasites and hosts in nature. Studies on parasites of humans and domestic animals could help supply ecologists and evolutionary biologists with some of this information, if only by extension or analogy with species in nature. Meanwhile, physiologists and immunologists often refer to certain ecological and evolutionary truisms, one of which serves as the theme of this volume (see Chapter l). All parties could clearly benefit by talking to one another.