Drs. Tamara and Jerry Cook, Sam Houston State University, are generous friends and collaborators. They have opened their home, labs, and cupboards to us in Huntsville, Texas. Without their support, this project would never have begun, moved forward, or achieved anything close to what it has. Tami also teaches a field parasitology course at SHSU in the summer that our group now participates in.

Dr. Stephen Curran, The University of Southern Mississippi, is a fellow fish parasitologist who has done extensive work in aquatic systems east of the Mississippi River. He has expertise in a variety of parasite groups, primarily the trematodes, and has agreed to provide taxonomic assistance to the project and exchange specimens to support both our work and his.

Dr. Tomas Scholz, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, is an expert cestodologist, and part of the Planetary Biodiversity Inventory of the tapeworms led by Drs. Janine Caira (University of Connecticut) and Kirsten Jensen (University of Kansas). Tomas will assist us primarily with identification of caryophyllaeid tapeworms from catostomid fishes (suckers), and we will provide specimens to his broader work on the evolution and systematics of this group.

Dr. Dennis Richardson, Quinnipiac University, is a fellow acanthocephalan biologist, with whom I have collaborated on a variety of projects over the years. He is currently working on a long-term project to document the continental diversity of morphological and life cycle characteristics of Leptorhynchoides thecatus, a common acanth parasite of centrarchid fishes (basses and sunfishes), as well as work on aquatic and parasitic leeches.  He will join us in the field during this project to collect specimens relevant to his work from southeastern Texas. Dr. Richardson’s field work with us has turned into 2 new publications on aspects of the distribution and host associations of freshwater leeches.

Drs. Thomas Rosser & Wes Baumgartner of Mississippi State University, and Matt Griffin of the Thad Cochran National Warmwater Aquaculture Center @ MSU, have been identifying myxozoan parasites for us. They have identified a number of new species and new reports of ecological significance. The first new myxozoan from this work, Myxobolus lepomis, was published in Systematic Parasitology in 2017. More are on the way.