I am framing the first module about parasite diversity and host traits.
The first part of the this module will be focused on describing patterns of parasite diversity in the selected host species (depending on the data availability, see below for more details). Mainly, this is to get students to get themselves familiar with the topic of infectious disease, the concepts (parasite species richness, PSR), the data, and the program (R). They should be able to describe the distribution of PSR frequency (super skewed with many host species only have a few but a few host species have a lot).
The second part will be focused on exploration of the relationship between PSR and sampling effort. Students should understand the importance of correct the data for sampling effort and should gain some knowledge of different ways to do so.
The third (and maybe a forth) part will be focused on searching for the host traits that are correlated with PSR (after corrected for sampling effort). These traits could be physiological traits, ecological traits, and evolutionary traits.
About the data, I would like to use the primate parasite dataset, which is the most complete and published. I have emailed Charles Nunn about it but haven’t heard back from him. I will try contacting one of his postdocs that I know personally to see if she can help ask Chalie about it.