Do parasites really "lag" behind their hosts' speciation rates? NO. Find out why in the next link

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Permalink Reply by Hugo Mejia-Madrid on April 16, 2012 at 8:24am

An excerpt from this chapter:

...nematode parasites may not speciate along with their vertebrate hosts because
they have longer stasis periods than do their hosts. Nematode parasite survival strategy
involves moving among host species via EF without speciating. Parasite speciation might
take place when parasites switch host families. This might be the real reason why
Fahrenholz’s and Manter’s rules (co-speciation of parasites and hosts and parasite evolution
lags behind host evolution, respectively) are not supported among these parasites and why
research programs based on cospeciation are unlikely to succeed.

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