Parasitology: A Conceptual Approach

Parasitology: A conceptual approach is a newest textbook focusing on concepts and principles of parasitology for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students as well as instructors and professors in universities. The book covers a wide spectrum of parasitic protozoans, helminths, and arthropods, and even includes parasitic fungi, algae, and plants. It contains a total of 276 highest quality figures, 30 useful boxes with precise explanations, and 16 well-organized tables. A highly useful feature of this book is that, in the publishers’ website, learning and teaching materials are available for students and instructors. They can obtain images from the book and also the instructor’s guide on how to structure a teaching course using the book. The book is divided largely into 2 parts according to different approaches to parasitology. The first part is to build up basic concepts of parasitology, host-parasite relationships, epidemiology, and management and control of parasitic diseases. This first part is highly interesting to read and provides numerous unique examples of parasite behaviors, host responses, evasion from host’s immune responses, genomics, proteomics, variation, diversity, evolution, and so on. This part is divided into 10 large chapters, each of which is subdivided into 3-9 sections. The titles of the 10 chapters are as follows: an introduction to parasitism, an overview of parasite diversity, the parasite’s way of life, host defense and parasite evasion, parasite versus host: pathology and disease, the ecology of parasites, evolution biology of parasitism, parasites and conservation biology, the challenge of parasite control, and the future of parasitology. Every chapter is dealing with the most recent knowledge regarding each relevant topic and highlights the modern concepts of parasite biology and evolutionary ecology. Different types of parasites, hosts, and vectors are well explained. A unique composition of the chapter is “review questions” at the end of each chapter (before references) for further discussion and thought. The second part entitled, “Rogues’ Gallery of Parasites”, is also unique. It describes the traditional concept of parasitology with morphology and taxonomy-based approaches. It provides a concise overview of the basic biology of major parasites of medical and/or veterinary importance in total 48 sections. This part deals with details of distribution and prevalence, hosts and transmission, pathology, diagnosis, treatment, and control of each parasitic infection. The figures used in this part are extraordinarily superexcellent. This part provides students with traditional contents regarding the basic features of parasitology. One thing to mention is that trematodes infecting the intestinal tract of humans and animals are omitted in this book. It would have been good to include at least, among them, echinostomes (Echinostomatidae) and heterophyids (Heterophyidae), quite big groups of parasites of humans and animals. The book provides an excellent resource and will be highly useful and helpful for medical and veterinary medical students, tropical medicine doctors, researchers, laboratory personnel, and professors in parasitology and biology. ISSN (Print) 0023-4001 ISSN (Online) 1738-0006