A consistent flow of manuscripts on parasites to African Zoology prompted the Editorial Board to consider dedicating an issue on this topic. The issue attracted 11 papers. Although South African parasitologists have received international recognition for their work on parasitic diseases of domestic animals and humans for more than 100 years following the ground-breaking work of Sir Arnold Theiler, Elsdon Dew, Willie Neitz, Anna Verster, Ivan Horak and many others at the Onderstepoort Research Facility and the Veterinary Faculty at University of Pretoria, this issue centres largely on parasites of aquatic organisms, a focus of many South African researchers. The report on ectoparasites from the eastern rock sengis represents the only paper dealing with parasites of mammals and reports on the effect of host parameters on parasite occurrence.