In the face of mass extinction, the loss of parasite biodiversity is a potentially catastrophic problem, of unknown scale and velocity. Drawing together five years of work by nearly 20 researchers across eight countries, including the most complete open-access georeferenced dataset currently available for parasites, we ask a simple question: what percentage of parasites are expected to be lost to climate change and host extinctions? Given the likely possibility of parasite mass extinction, what tools and data are available to help conservation practitioners prioritize parasites at risk? And perhaps most importantly, what are the possible downstream effects of parasite mass extinction on ecosystems?
Results/Conclusions
Roughly 10% of parasites face some vulnerability to extinction from climate change; up to a third of helminth parasites are likely threatened with extinction as a combination of climate change and coextinction risk. Datasets like the georeferenced US National Parasite Collection, and basic methods in macroecology, provide a starting point for measuring risk and prioritizing the most vulnerable species. But the theory underpinning this approach (and most work published to this point) is only a starting point for a more parasite-specific understanding of extinction. I will conclude by discussing advances in modeling that bridge the gap between network theory and species distribution models, and how these could be applied to existing datasets (or drive collection of new ones) to better project parasite extinctions in a changing climate.