Parasites as indicators of pollution a review
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Environmental parasitology is the use of parasites as indicators to assess the effects of anthropogenic impacts, particularly pollution, on the environment. The growing success of parasites as indicators is due to a number of reasons. There are however important gaps in parasite knowledge which are currently undermining the usefulness of parasite indicators. Currently, parasites are used in environmental assessment by various measurements which include sentinel species, bioassays and indicator species. Parasites must have certain criteria that allow them to be ideal indicators. The problems associated with parasitological data are also discussed here.
Key words: parasites, indicators, pollution, environmental parasitology
INTRODUCTION
What is environmental parasitology? Environmental impact assessment is the method used to determine the health of the environment, and also to indicate what anthropogenic impacts are having on it. These methods can become fairly complex and expensive to provide meaningful information for decision making. Environmental parasitology is therefore the use of parasites as an environmental assessment method which has many advantages although a few problems have been identified...