CNS2023-144337 - Uniendo coexistencia y coinfeccciones ba

Being a parasite is the most common consumer strategy among organisms, however, the role of parasites in ecology is often neglected. This is a surprising fact considering that it has been repeatedly shown they affect host species at all levels of ecological organization. For instance, parasites can reduce fitness and population size of single host species (Møller et al. 1990), the biological interactions that establish hosts with other organisms (Hatcher et al. 2006) as well as the functioning and stability of complete food-webs and competitive systems (Lafferty et al. 2008). Despite the importance of parasitism, we currently lack a framework to understand their effects and predict their dynamics under a multispecies and multitrophic ecological perspective.