From Elton to Mathematics and Back Again | Semantic Scholar

This review posits that the methods, directions and questions in the field of food web ecology are not always congruent with parasitological inquiry, and asserts that more effort must be focused on parasite-centric models.

To make significant contributions to the food web debate, parasitologists must work from the standpoint of natural history to elucidate patterns of biomass, species abundance, and interaction strengths in real food webs, and these will provide the basis for more realistic models that incorporate parasite dynamics into the overall functional dynamics of the whole web.