From stigma to strategy: advancing the conservation and perception of metazoan parasites

Abstract

Parasites play essential roles in ecosystems by facilitating biomass transfer, maintaining food web complexity, regulating host populations, and driving evolutionary processes in other species. Yet, they remain among the least protected by wildlife and ecosystem conservation initiatives with Red Listing of parasites being in its infancy. During a workshop on conservation and Red Listing of parasites organised in 2024 (in Belgium), experts undertook a collaborative effort to establish priorities enabling assessment of metazoan parasites of animals. Applying an adapted version of the Nominal Group Technique, we addressed five themes, including ethics and perceptions. Indeed, recent research provides empirical evidence that emotional responses to different species are key factors influencing people's willingness to support conservation efforts, which makes the human perception of parasites a similarly important aspect. The World Archives of Species Perception (WASP) project represents the most extensive and inclusive scientific effort, to date to address the knowledge gap surrounding public perceptions of biodiversity. Building upon the general WASP project methodology, and inspired by the above-mentioned workshop, we developed a spin-off for human perception of parasites (WASP-P), to understand how different traits of individual species across metazoan parasite taxa are perceived by the public and how this can help facilitate more effective conservation. Preliminary results suggest rich patterns in public perception of different parasite species that warrant deeper investigation. The ongoing efforts will provide valuable insights for the IUCN SSC Parasite Specialist Group and contribute to the development of more effective, targeted strategies for parasite conservation and policy engagement globally.