EQUAL
RIGHTS FOR PARASITES!
Post #15
Donald
A. Windsor
Conservation
of parasites seems to be an increasing concern in the literature.
Good.
My
first involvement with this issue started at a Symposium on the
Conservation of Biological Resources back in September 1990, at
Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. The Society for Conservation
Biology was formed just five years earlier and many of its founders
were present. At dinner they were still conversing about
conservation when I interjected a statement of caution. I warned
that all day the talk was about conserving hosts; no mention was made
of conserving parasites. I then spontaneously uttered, “How about
equal rights for parasites?”
Most
of the diners frowned and some even muttered “Good riddance”.
However, one of the founders smiled and repeated “Equal rights for
parasites” and complimented me on the catchy rhyme.
That
was a pivotal moment for me and I often pondered it after the
meeting. Some parasite species can go extinct when their hosts do,
so if the hosts are saved, the parasites will be also. But at that
time, antibiotics were being routinely administered to anesthetized
wildlife because their paradigm was that wildlife should be healthy.
Viewed
from the point of parasites, free-living wildlife are habitat.
Forcing wildlife to be healthy is unnatural, a crime against nature.
This was not a popular opinion, so getting my views published was
difficult.
But,
I got a powerful break when Nature, the world’s leading
scientific journal, published my terse letter to the editor.
Unfortunately, the editor assigned it a cutesy title. Here is an
exact retype of that letter.
Nature 1990 November 8; 348(6297): 104.
Heavenly
hosts.
SIR – In the attempt to save certain species from extinction, for
example the California condor, the black-footed ferret and so on, how
much attention is being given to their natural parasites?
When all of the last remaining members of a species are taken
into captivity, they may lose their parasites, either by the drastic
change in living conditions, by treatment from zoo veterinarians or
by generations of captive breeding. When they, or their offspring,
are then released back to the wild, will they be able to become
reinfected? Some parasites are quite host-specific in the wild and
may indeed become extinct when their natural hosts are gone.
“So what?” may be a typical reaction. But, if our goal is
to conserve biological diversity, then indeed all species should be
considered, not just those with the most outward appeal. Many hosts
evolved or, better still, co-evolved with their parasitic burden.
Perhaps they deserve each other.
Equal rights for parasites!
Windsor, Donald A.
PO Box 604
Norwich, New York, USA
In
spite of the uninformative title, the response was very gratifying;
even the media called.
Buoyed
up by that feedback, I submitted many manuscripts to various
journals, but most were rejected. However, a few did get accepted.
In 1995 the editor of Conservation Biology invited me to write
a guest editorial.
Windsor, Donald A. Guest Editorial. Equal rights for parasites.
Conservation
Biology 1995 February; 9(1): 1-2.
That led to another invitation and another publication.
Windsor, Donald A. Endangered interrelationships; the ecological
cost of parasites lost. Wild
Earth 1995-96 Winter; 5(4): 78-83.
More publications followed.
Windsor, Donald A. Stand up for parasites. Trends
in Ecology & Evolution 1997 Jan; 12(1):
32.
Windsor, Donald A. Equal rights for parasites. Perspectives
in Biology and Medicine 1997 Winter; 40(2):
222-229.
Windsor, Donald A. Equal rights for parasites. BioScience
1998 Apr; 48(4):244.
One reader even sent me a bumper sticker gaudily proclaiming “Equal
Rights for Parasites”.
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