Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
J Exp Biol. 2013 Jan 1;216(Pt 1):11-7. doi: 10.1242/jeb.074088.
An animal with a parasite is not likely to behave like a similar animal without that parasite. This is a simple enough concept, one that is now widely recognized as true, but if we move beyond that statement, the light that it casts on behavior fades quickly: the world of parasites, hosts and behavior is shadowy, and boundaries are ill-defined. For instance, at first glance, the growing list of altered behaviors tells us very little about how those alterations happen, much less how they evolved. Some cases of parasite-induced behavioral change are truly manipulative, with the parasite standing to benefit from the changed behavior. In other cases, the altered behavior has an almost curative, if not prophylactic, effect; in those cases, the host benefits. This paper will provide an overview of the conflicting (and coinciding) demands on parasite and host, using examples from a wide range of taxa and posing questions for the future. In particular, what does the larger world of animal behavior tell us about how to go about seeking insights - or at least, what not to do? By asking questions about the sensory-perceptual world of hosts, we can identify those associations that hold the greatest promise for neuroethological studies of parasite-induced behavioral alterations, and those studies can, in turn, help guide our understanding of how parasite-induced alterations evolved, and how they are maintained.
带有寄生虫的动物的行为不太可能与没有寄生虫的相似动物的行为相同。这是一个再简单不过的概念，现在已被广泛认可为事实，但如果我们超越这个陈述，它所揭示的行为就迅速变得模糊不清：寄生虫、宿主和行为的世界是阴暗的，界限也不明确。例如，乍一看，越来越多的行为改变告诉我们这些改变是如何发生的，更不用说它们是如何进化的了。一些寄生虫引起的行为改变确实是操纵性的，寄生虫可以从改变的行为中受益。在其他情况下，改变的行为具有几乎治疗性的（如果不是预防性的）效果；在这些情况下，宿主受益。本文将概述寄生虫和宿主之间相互冲突（和一致）的需求，使用来自广泛分类群的例子，并为未来提出问题。特别是，动物行为的更大世界告诉我们如何寻求见解——或者至少，告诉我们不要做什么？通过询问宿主的感觉感知世界，我们可以确定那些具有最大潜力的关联，用于研究寄生虫引起的行为改变的神经生态学研究，而这些研究反过来又可以帮助我们理解寄生虫引起的改变是如何进化的，以及它们是如何被维持的。
