What is it about?
This book chapter is a literature review of the various biotic (i.e. host or parasite characteristics) and abiotic (e.g. climate) factors that account for differences in (macro)parasite burden between the sexes of hosts ranging from arthropods to mammals.
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Why is it important?
This is a timely synthesis of ultimate and proximate causes of the commonly observed differences in susceptibility and transmission of parasites between host sexes. It furthermore highlights gaps in our current knowledge and questions that future research in this field should address.
Perspectives
I quite enjoyed delving deep into the literature for this chapter and it was important to me to cover both invertebrates (which are to date poorly studied in this respect) as well as vertebrates. Looking at this topic both from the host's as well as the parasite's perspective is probably something researchers need to take more into account.
Dr Heike Lutermann
University of Pretoria
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Sex-Biased Parasitism, January 2019, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-12-809633-8.90725-8.
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