| Description: |
The odds of being attacked and castrated by a variety of parasitic flatworms increases for marine horn snails the further they're found from the tropics. A research team discovered this exception to an otherwise globally-observed pattern-usually biodiversity is greatest in the tropics and decreases toward the poles. The study makes a case for using host-parasite relationships as a tool to understand why there are typically more species in the tropics than anywhere else in the world. [Source: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (Panama)]
|
 |
