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Abstract

Food webs are a conceptual underpinning for community ecology. Unfortunately, nearly all webs do not include parasites. Considering that parasitism is the most popular lifestyle on Earth, there is concern that food webs may not be complete without parasites. This working group brings together a range of experts on parasitism, food web theory, and empirical food webs to consider how parasites can be included into food-webs and to explore the consequences of their inclusion.

The working group will focus on developing theoretical food webs capable of considering parasites, investigate, in detail, the few food webs that include parasites, and collate information that will allow us to assemble food-webs for a number of well-studied ecosystems for which parasite data are available. Ultimately we hope to convince ecologists to incorporate parasites into all future food web studies.