Meeting Abstract
It is increasingly recognized that ecological speciation plays a significant role in the diversification of parasites, a major component of biodiversity on Earth. Understanding mechanisms that promote or constrain host shifts by parasites is therefore critical to our understanding of diversification processes. In this poster, I explore the idea that phenotypic variation in hosts arising from environmental stimuli can promote shifts in parasites by bridging both spatiotemporal, and phenotypic gaps between ancestral and novel hosts. This hypothesis, which I call the plastic bridge hypothesis, is conceptually distinct from those invoking genetic variation in bridging these gaps. The plastic bridge perspective suggests that parasite diversity is due not only due to divergent selection provided by hosts, but also to the intraspecific variation that facilitates shifts between them. This view is timely, as biological invasions and range shifts associated with climate change foster novel host-parasite interactions.
