What's Your Favourite Parasite?

Hollzy

I have to do a short report on a parasite of my choice for a parasitology module next week. I want to pick something interesting I haven't heard of before. Any suggestions?
Thanks!

Mickeroo

Cymathoa Exigua? It attaches itself to a red snapper's tongue and eventually replaces it. Despite this it looks kind of cute.

You've probably heard of it before though.

Hollzy

I've heard a little about it before, still a good suggestion though!

Adam Khor

The tongue parasite is a nice one :B (Well, it really isn´t but you know what I mean)

Some of my favorites would be:

- Sacculina (crustacean, but molts the hard parts of its body and turns into a small blob with only the necessary to survive, and injects itself into a crab; then it grows tendrils that extend all over the crab's body draining it of nutrients, and also if the crab is male it turns it into a female bodyguard for its own brood)

- Dermatobia hominis (human botfly, female catches a mosquito and sticks its egg to it, then lets it go; mosquito finds warm blooded victim, often human, and does what female mosquitos do; while it feeds, the human's body warmth makes the egg hatch, and the botfly maggot crawls into the puncture wound made by the mosquito and into the flesh; there it feeds on flesh and blood, grows like crazy, and can be felt and eventually even seen under the skin. It is covered on spikes so extracting it can be dangerous, because it anchors itself to the "burrow" in the flesh and if forcefully removed, bits of its body may remain inside and cause fatal infection. Eventually when it's ready to pupate, it crawls out and drops to the ground on its own. Gross). The African tumbu fly is similar but smaller and apparently you can get infested by hundreds of maggots at the same time; also, the fly lays its eggs on moist clothes so you only have to wear those clothes to be parasitized.

- Tobacco hornworm parasitoid wasp (sorry, don´t remember the scientific name ) Makes viruses out of fragments of its own DNA, and injects them into its host, the tobacco hornworm. The viruses act as a sort of insect AIDS, basically shutting down the hornworm's immune system, so that the wasp's eggs injected later won´t be rejected by it.
Of course, the wasps feed on the hapless worm eventually.

- Ommatokoita elongata; a parasitic copepod, feeds on the cornea of Greenland sharks, eventually rendering them blind. Almost all Greenland sharks carry the parasite. Fortunately, since the sharks have other senses they can do fine even when blinded, and besides, it appears that the parasite may function as a lure to attract the shark's prey.

- Gordian worm. You can see videos of them in YouTube if I well recall. They infect insects and spiders when they drink the worm's eggs (?) in water; the worm eventually causes the bug to commit suicide by drowning, and emerges from the bug's behind ready to reproduce.

There's many more but these are the ones I remembered right now :cool:

seagull

I can't remember it's name, but there's a maggot that parasitises snails, and they go into the eyestalks.

Hollzy

That presentation was a long time ago now but it's nice to see the thread is still active! I was aware of Dermatobia hominis but didn't know the name, so thanks for mentioning that one in particular!

aidoh

Shame I only saw this now, I had a few suggestions for you until I saw you had the report done already. Hope it went well!
Lots of cool species I've never heard of before in here too.
If your interested in parasitism or have to write about it again in the future, I'd consider having a look at parasitic behaviour in vertebrates to put an unusual spin on the subject!
It's easy to think of sea lice, parasitoid wasps and gut worms (all very cool in their own regard of course) but for me it's more interesting to find out about extraordinary behavioural adaptions in otherwise non-parasitic animals.
Like cuckoos famously laying their eggs in other birds nests in a shortcut to avoid the cost of provisioning to their own chicks.
Or kleptoparasitism, where an individual watches another individual spend all its energy foraging and then swoops in at the last minute to steal the fruits of their effort. Not only the stuff of cheeky hyenas stealing kills from a lion; if you have a few minutes to spare and live near the coast anywhere in Ireland you can sit and watch gulls do this to plovers and oystercatchers all the time the little dirtbags!