Parasite Biodiversity, by R. Poulin and S. Morand. Smithsonian Books, Washington, D.C. 2004. 216 p., $50.00, ISBN 1-58834-170-4.
I pass a small wetland on my way to work each morning. It often contains small numbers of breeding mallards, canvasbacks, Canada geese, and a few shorebirds. In this book, Robert Poulin and Serge Morand encourage us to revel in such diversity. More specifically, they encourage us to think about the magnitude of the “hidden” biodiversity that exists in, or on, animals such as these. If we had the opportunity to peer inside a sample of these hosts, 2 features would impress us. One is the magnitude in the numbers of species that exploit these types of hosts (52 species of intestinal macroparasites alone in populations of lesser scaup ducks), and the second is the tremendous variation in the numbers of parasite species in different host species, even if the hosts are...