Giovanni Strona
University of Milan-Bicocca
Department of Biotechnology and Biosciences
Piazza della Scienza, 1 Milan, 20126 Italy
E-mail: giovanni.strona@unimib.it

Maria Lourdes D. Palomares
Fisheries Centre
2202 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
E-mail: m.palomares@fisheries.ubc.ca

Nicolas Bailly
The WorldFish Center
Aquatic Biodiversity Informatics Office
Khush Hall, IRRI Los Baños, Laguna Philippines
E-mail: n.bailly@cgiar.org

Paolo Galli
Università degli studi di Milano Bicocca
Biotecnologie e bioscienze
Piazza della Scienza, 1
Milano, 20126 Italy
E-mail: paolo.galli@unimib.it

Kevin D. Lafferty
USGS - Western Ecological Research Center
Marine Science Institute
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106
E-mail: lafferty@lifesci.ucsb.edu

FPEDB.csv -- 38008 records, ASCII text, comma delimited,(MD5: 88b66dcf0be2832e9682a73305d925ad)

The present data set includes 38008 fish parasite records (for Acanthocephala, Cestoda, Monogenea, Nematoda, Trematoda) compiled from scientific literature, Internet databases, and museum collections paired to the corresponding host ecological, biogeographical, and phylogenetic traits (maximum length, growth rate, life span, age at maturity, trophic level, habitat preference, geographical range size, taxonomy). The data focus on host features, because specific parasite traits are not consistently available across records. For this reason, the data set is intended as a flexible framework able to extend the principles of ecological niche modeling to the host–parasite system, providing researchers with the data to model parasite niches based on their distribution in host species and the associated host features. In this sense, the database offers a framework for testing general ecological, biogeographical, and phylogenetic hypotheses based on the identification of hosts as parasite habitat. Potential applications of the data set are, for example, the investigation of species–area relationships or the taxonomic distribution of host-specificity. The provided host–parasite list is that currently used by Fish Parasite Ecology Software Tool (FishPEST, http://purl.oclc.org/fishpest), which is a website that allows researchers to model several aspects of the relationships between fish parasites and their hosts. The database is intended for researchers that wish to have more freedom to analyze the database than currently possible with FishPEST. However, for readers that have not seen FishPEST, we recommend using this as a starting point for interacting with the database.

Key words: FishPEST; host range; host specificity; parasite species richness.