Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Back in 2013 I celebrated that Australia’s unusually hot, dry Summer meant a lower risk of deadly tick bites, but apparently this is now a bad thing.
Climate change could wipe out a third of parasite species, study finds
Parasites such as lice and fleas are crucial to ecosystems, scientists say, and extinctions could lead to unpredictable invasions
Thursday 7 September 2017
Climate change could wipe out a third of all parasite species on Earth, according to the most comprehensive analysis to date.
Tapeworms, roundworms, ticks, lice and fleas are feared for the diseases they cause or carry, but scientists warn that they also play a vital role in ecosystems. Major extinctions among parasites could lead to unpredictable invasions of surviving parasites into new areas, affecting wildlife and humans and making a “significant contribution” to the sixth mass extinction already under way on Earth.
The new research, published in Science Advances, used the collection of 20m parasites held at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of National History in the US to map the global distribution of 457 parasites. The scientists then applied a range of climate models and future scenarios and found that the average level of extinctions as habitats become unsuitable for parasites was 10% by 2070, but extinctions rose to a third if the loss of host species was also included.
“Parasites are obviously a hard sell,” said Carlson. “Even if you are grossed out by them – and there are obviously downsides for individual hosts and for humans – parasites play a huge role in ecosystems.” They provide up to 80% of the food web links in ecosystems, he said. Having a wide range of parasites in an ecosystem also means they compete with one another, which can help slow down the spread of diseases.
…
One example of the complex role parasites can play is a hairworm that lives in grasshoppers in Japan and tends to lead its host to jump into water, where the grasshoppers become a major food source for rare fish. “In some subtle ways, parasites are puppeteers,” Carlson said.
…
The abstract of the study;
Parasite biodiversity faces extinction and redistribution in a changing climate
Colin J. Carlson, Kevin R. Burgio, Eric R. Dougherty, Anna J. Phillips, Veronica M. Bueno, Christopher F. Clements, Giovanni Castaldo, Tad A. Dallas, Carrie A. Cizauskas, Graeme S. Cumming, Jorge Doña, Nyeema C. Harris, Roger Jovani, Sergey Mironov, Oliver C. Muellerklein, Heather C. Proctor and Wayne M. Getz
Climate change is a well-documented driver of both wildlife extinction and disease emergence, but the negative impacts of climate change on parasite diversity are undocumented. We compiled the most comprehensive spatially explicit data set available for parasites, projected range shifts in a changing climate, and estimated extinction rates for eight major parasite clades. On the basis of 53,133 occurrences capturing the geographic ranges of 457 parasite species, conservative model projections suggest that 5 to 10% of these species are committed to extinction by 2070 from climate-driven habitat loss alone. We find no evidence that parasites with zoonotic potential have a significantly higher potential to gain range in a changing climate, but we do find that ectoparasites (especially ticks) fare disproportionately worse than endoparasites. Accounting for host-driven coextinctions, models predict that up to 30% of parasitic worms are committed to extinction, driven by a combination of direct and indirect pressures. Despite high local extinction rates, parasite richness could still increase by an order of magnitude in some places, because species successfully tracking climate change invade temperate ecosystems and replace native species with unpredictable ecological consequences.
Read more: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/9/e1602422
Sadly I see no long term drop in the number of parasites to support this claim. Many Parasites tend to have rapid life cycles. Many of them also have wide ranges, spanning significant variations in climate. This suggests a substantial ability to adapt to any plausible amount of climate change we are likely to experience in the foreseeable future.
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The real parasites here are Carrington, his Grauniad chums and the 17 authors of this “study”.
And they all thrive and grow fat feeding on the Climate Change Scam.
I’m sure it was Willis who hypothesised that the value of a ‘scientific’ paper was inversely proportional to the number of authors.
Some good evidence right here!
Hasn’t someone (rather a lot of someones, look at all those authors) got the idea of what is ‘A Parasite’ all a bit wrong?
Without getting links to dictionaries and all but simply put, isn’t a parasite is some critter that takes ‘goodness’ from another critter without being asked/invited and without giving any goodness in return.
Often returning ‘badness’ in fact but rarely enough to kill. We all know the proverb about ‘killing hosts’
Thieves and scallywags basically. Nuisances but not all really as bad as they’re cracked up to be
So that is where out authors here reveal how twee, nice and ultra clean their upbringings were (and their out-and-out selfishness) – by the example they give.
What is the actual parasite in there – the fish even – as it is the ultimate beneficiary and gives what back?
Isn’t this a story of symbiosis?
But of course fishes are ‘nice’ and worms are ‘nasty’ in the politics and thinking of the school playground, the playground that is climate science. Appalling simplifications, cause & effect reversals and rolled into Lord of the Flies words/action.
(What are their thoughts on ‘flies’ I wonder……)
Do they have ‘thoughts’ even? They seem endlessly to let others do the thinking – hence the number of authors on this one.
Just who/what is The Parasite here….
Surely the body temperature of the target species is ambient for parasites. Ticks have a wide range besides. Manitoba has a substantial tick population and it could warm up, 10C in winter (isn’t that the season that does most of the warming – the tropics pretty well stay unchanged.) Why don’t they be more specific where they are talking about and stay on the same page with the team. The tropics I believe has the biggest variety and likely biggest population of parasites. and this region doesn’t change.
No worries, no doubt there will be another study telling us climate doom COULD lead to an increase in them to.
Whats the difference between Elon Musk and a parasite?
OK, I give up, I’ve checked the textbooks & internet…
so what IS the difference between Elon Musk and a parasite ?
I haven’t figured that one out myself. Maybe the number of appendages. My comment wasn’t the intro of a joke.
The number of legs ?
Flynn
legs and arms
One of them tries to convince its host that it is doing them a favor; the other doesn’t bother.
the amount of government funding involved.
Anyone claiming that lice and ticks are vital to the ecosystem has lost the plot.
That was exactly my thought; where’s any proof of that assertion in the claimed 50,000 “occurrences” these gravy trainers conjured up!
And now how about a real world study of the cost in human and animal/livestock lives lost or debilitated by the worldwide harm and damage done by the collection of bloodsuckers, spreading disease. (Bloodsuckers meaning the insects, but I liked the line about grant parasites).
The Guardian is just a disgrace these days, to think I used to buy it regularly!
Well, the authors allude to the point that even if some of the parasites do disappear the ecological niche they filled (whether we feel it beneficial or not really doesn’t matter) will be subsequently filled by a successor creature. We will only be trading one parasite for another.
And yes, these lowly creatures do fill a roll in the food chain, but I wonder if the roll couldn’t be played by a less odious life form.
Except for mosquitos – not sure which parasite provides much food.
This might be a shocking to many people but parasitism is the dominant way of live by far. Every free living organism is host to a multitude of internal parasites, and feeds occasionally a multitude of external parasites. Even parasites have parasites. Parasitism is an extremely good adaptive strategy. Even among humans parasitism is a strong impulse. Part of the society is always looking for ways to live at the other part expense. It is just natural.
I think many of the things you think of as parasites are actually in a symbiotic relationship. I have read that there are about 10 trillion bacteria on a typical person, about 40 lbs of a typical person’s weight, but most of those provide protection of some sort. Bacteria might eat oils in our skin, but their excrement protects us from fungus diseases. We have tons of bacteria in the gut, eating our dead cells, and food, but in return they also break down the food and allow us to get vitamins.
I think parasites are actually critters that take your food (blood, skin, whatever) and don’t return anything of value.
Not really. Parasitism, commensalism, and symbiosis are part of a continuum, where an organism lives at the expense of other, reducing, not changing, or increasing the fitness of the host. But the effect depends on the state and resources of the host. If your immune system is compromised your formerly symbionts will eat you alive. And if resources are low the load of commensalists becomes detrimental.
For a parasite it is interesting not to reduce too much the fitness of its host, and even better to increase it if possible.
A bureaucrat that wastes 90% of its time would be considered by most a parasite, even if the other 10% he is doing a useful job.
What is a diagram of any and every food pyramid, with plants etc at the bottom and apex predators like humans at the top, if it is not a description of parasitism? These people really are dipsticks.
But the bit I liked best was
lol What kind of a journal title is that? It’s up there with Astrobiology.
I did some computational modelling on my Commodore 64 and my research could suggest that ticks in 30 years time are going to be as big as buffaloes, I’d like to leave a link to my work but hey it is a Commodore 64 after all .
No need for data retention or detailed method, you are conducting climate science.
Peer reviewed !
“Major extinctions among parasites could lead to unpredictable invasions of surviving parasites into new areas, affecting wildlife and humans and making a “significant contribution” to the sixth mass extinction already under way on Earth.”
Trump needs to place a travel ban on these foreign ticks immediately ;0)
I think this study is absolutely correct. Why? Because the parasites they’re talking about are actually themselves. In the absence of global warming alarmism these climate fear parasites might just become extinct. Of course there’s lots of other parasites (lawyers and politicians), but our climate fear parasites believe that, uniquely, they’re actually a beneficial parasite species.
They’re not.
“Climate Change is Going to Kill Off All the Parasites”
This is a problem???
I’ll bet the ones in Washington survive.
They say that cockroaches will survive a nuclear war.
I believe the MythBusters did an episode on that.
darn. how will I survive w/o welfare cheats taking stuff?
a parasite is a parasite amirite?
Why are so may scientists evolution deniers? Do they not understand the natural mechanism that allows living organisms to adapt to a changing environment?
Parasites unite to save us from climate change! …. Oh, wait a minute! ; )
Stop kidding. In the next administration such parasites could be used by EPA parasites to block new pipelines, roads, power plants, and other projects.
We can’t lose the Ticks, what would the Tocks do? Time would stand still……… /s
What would we ever do without the Tick?
http://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=Q6psnwes&id=5096C6956FBC8FF89A0F7CFC48BAA12290CDFF8F&thid=OIP.Q6psnwesgxUXxiCi7MulTAEsCo&q=the+tick+animated+series&simid=608013924561717481&selectedIndex=0&qpvt=the+tick+animated+series&ajaxhist=0
No it wouldn’t. It would just be very biased.
Naw, vee have vays of making it tock…
http://www.flubu.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/we_have_ways_of_making_you_talk.jpg
“Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum…” –de Morgan
I could name some great fleas that infest our society and Science in particular, sucking the wealth from the rest of us in the cause of World Socialism..
Hubris anyone?
This is the parasite of which global warming needs to rid us.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-francis-climate-change-denial-223108285.html
Who will rid us of this troublesome priest?