In this textbook, Timothy Goater, Cameron Goater and Gerald Esch provide diverse perspectives from a combined 80 years of undergraduate and graduate teaching along with broad research backgrounds in ecological parasitology.
Timothy Goater is professor and former Chair in the Biology Department at Vancouver Island University, British Columbia. During the past 20 years he has taught courses in introductory biology, parasitology, ecological parasitology, invertebrate zoology and entomology. He also co-teaches a tropical field biology course in Belize. Many undergraduate students have shared his passion for parasites and have conducted diverse field-based research projects in ecological parasitology. Tim’s research interests focus on the population and community ecology of parasites, especially marine, wildlife and amphibian-parasite systems. He has been an active member of the American Society of Parasitologists (ASP) for 28 years.
Cameron Goater is Associate Professor and former Chair in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, teaching courses over the past 15 years in introductory biology, invertebrate biology, field biology and symbiotic interactions. His parasitological research roots are in the community ecology of helminths of waterfowl on the Canadian prairies. With his graduate students, these early interests have expanded to include empirical laboratory and field studies on the population and evolutionary ecology of helminths, primarily in aquatic systems involving fish, snails and amphibians. Recent interests have extended into livestock parasitology and into the biology of emerging parasites and diseases. He has been an active member of the ASP for 20 years, is a past ecology-epidemiology Associate Editor of the Journal of Parasitology, and a past-President of the Parasitology Section of the Canadian Society of Zoologists.
Gerald Esch is the Charles M. Allen Professor of Biology in the Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, North Carolina, where he has taught for 47 years. He is widely regarded as one of the renowned pioneers and world’s leading ecological parasitologists. Over the years, he has directed 42 graduate students on studies focused on various aspects of parasite population and community ecology. He is a 50-year member of the ASP and is past Editor of the Journal of Parasitology, a position he held for 19 years. In 1999, he was awarded the Clark P. Read Mentor Award by the ASP. In 2014, he will be a Special Editor for the Centennial Volume of the Journal of Parasitology
