Parasites

[palmtreepathos]

Originally Posted by CDC
Once away from the human body, mites do not survive more than 48-72 hours

So "they" say.... there are things at work that defy the book knowledge we accumulate for ourselves. Of course my 'compost in the creek' remark made as much sense as moving from my home. At the time it made sense, to my poor deranged mind, thank goodness I thought clearer as time passed.

I found 12 rattailed maggots in the bottom of a bucket of comfrey tea a couple weeks back,(they are creamy white 3/4 inch long larva with 3 inch long tails that act like little worms)... so bizarre as to give you the creeps, then I fed them to the fish.

I finally have a camera, let's see if I can document a few things around here. Have not been a camera buff in a long while, have patience.

[freeztar]

Parasites may affect breeding habits in amphibians
University of Georgia: News & Information

Athens, Ga. – Parasites can decimate amphibian populations, but one University of Georgia researcher believes they might also play a role in spurring the evolution of new and sometimes bizarre breeding strategies.

Brian Todd, a researcher at the UGA Odum School of Ecology Savannah River Ecology Lab, explains that most amphibians start their lives in water (tadpoles are a good example), and then make their way onto land as adults and return to the water to breed. But there are other breeding strategies as well. Take, for instance, the Darwin’s frog, the species that swallows its eggs and, a few weeks later, regurgitates its young. Or the marsupial frog, a species that carries its eggs on its back until they hatch. Several species lay eggs in small puddles on land or high up in trees where they hatch as miniature versions of adults, bypassing the larval stage entirely.

Is it just Amphibians though?

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by freeztar

... What are your experiences/thoughts about parasites? Do you know of some particularly interesting examples? What can we do to better protect ourselves from these fiends?

Fiends!? Or friends? Maybe, just maybe, parasitic retroviruses account for a part of human evolution. Or maybe not. Nonetheless, this report asserts it is so.

Originally Posted by Andrea Thompson

... Scientists had long wondered how genes such as p53 built their powerful empire over other genes. A new study detailed this week in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences implicates the ancient retroviruses as the force behind p53's rise to power.

Repetitive DNA

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, analyzed and compared genetic data from different species and found that certain retroviruses entered the genome about 40 million years ago and spread rapidly in primates about 25 million years ago. ...

What's in Your Genes? Ancient Parasites | LiveScience

[freeztar]

Malarial parasites lend a clue to understanding malarial symptoms and possibly a treatment.

NIAID Media Availability: Study of Malaria Parasites in Human Blood Samples Reveals New Parasitic States

Although malaria parasites have undergone extensive laboratory study, relatively little is known about how they behave in humans to cause disease. Newly published data from a study of malaria-infected human blood reveal two biological states of the parasite Plasmodium falciparum not observed under laboratory conditions. This information may help scientists develop new strategies for treating malaria.

[mynah]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

euw, just looked up some links

how??

By keeping your immune system occupied with useful stuff instead of overreacting to nonexistent dangers and causing the problems you mentioned. We evolved with parasites, and our bodies are geared to maintain a truce, albeit uneasy, with them. It has been found that some animals, including zebras, sicken and eventually die if purged of their parasites.

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by mynah

It has been found that some animals, including zebras, sicken and eventually die if purged of their parasites.

Do you have a source for that?

[modest]

I saw this on TV and was absolutely fascinated. The parasite is the Dicrocoelium dendriticum and it moves from cow to snail to ant back to cow. I'll let you read the article below, but the punch line is how the parasite takes control of the ant's mind.

It is unimaginable to me how this parasite evolved.

From Mind control, ants, and parasites (thing)@Everything2.com

Meet Dicrocoelium, a fellow parasite.
This lancet fluke's lifestyle is a migration through the fluids of three hosts; a cow, a snail and an ant.
Hungry snails eat the dung of the infected cows and swallow inadvertently the sequestered fluke eggs. Once hatching in the snail's intestine, they burrow through the gut wall and into a digestive gland. Within this gland, flukes reproduce a second generation - spewed back into the world by the tormented snail as balls of slime, each sticky drop, a seething mass of flukes.
It is in the third host, the ant host, where we observe mind control. Foraging ants come across the sparkling orbs of snot, sensing the source of moisture that they are, they quench their thirst on the slick beverage. Entering the third hypersea reservoir, the flukes undulate through the ant's fluids, most form cysts in the abdomen, but some home in on the nerve clusters that control the mandibles in the ants head.
The temperature drops into the coolness of evening, and the infected ant feels compelled to leave its brethren, forsaking them to climb a grass stalk spire to its apex - the pastures emergent canopy. Preparing to make itself a sacrifice, it anchors itself to the flimsy blade, attached firmly by its mandibles.
It waits motionless throughout the night to be devoured by the primary host, the cow. Herds like ruminating clouds pass over the ant, blotting out the stars, the hoof falls reminisant of distant thunderclaps. If the ant survives until morning the flukes relinquish their control allowing the ant to scurry back to join its fellow workers in the gloom and away from the solar furnace which would be death to both the host and the backseat driving parasite. By day the ant is a regular Joe indistinguishable from any other ant, but when night falls, again it makes its ascent into 'munch range' over and over until eventually consumed, drowned in cud, bursting open as a swarm of flukes within the cows stomach. The flukes complete the cycle by penetrating the bovines liver, becoming adult egg producers.
Flukes embedded inside another organism, use mind control. Though it could be argued not remote control, but the comparison remains at some level similar, implanting electrodes, the closest we can come to crawling inside another animals CNS. At least hopefully so.

-modest

[freeztar]

Wow, that's absolutely amazing!

I did some follow up research and found several other parasites with mind controlling abilities.

Here is the wiki for Toxoplasma. Apparently this parasite can cause mice to run towards cats rather than away from them. It's also been researched as a cause of schizophrenia.
Toxoplasmosis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's a wiki for the cockroach wasp: (I like this wasp!)
Emerald cockroach wasp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As early as the 1940s it was published that wasps of this species sting a roach twice, which modifies the behavior of the prey. A recent study using radioactive labeling proved that the wasp stings precisely into specific ganglia. Ampulex compressa delivers an initial sting to a thoracic ganglion of a roach to mildly paralyze the front legs of the insect. This facilitates the second sting at a carefully chosen spot in the roach's head ganglia (brain), in the section that controls the escape reflex. As a result of this sting, the roach will now fail to produce normal escape responses.

The wasp, which is too small to carry the roach, then leads the victim to the wasp's burrow, by pulling one of the roach's antennae in a manner similar to a leash. Once they reach the burrow, the wasp lays an egg on the roach's abdomen and proceeds to fill in the burrow entrance with pebbles, more to keep other predators out than to keep the roach in.

The stung roach, its escape reflex disabled, will simply rest in the burrow as the wasp's egg hatches. A hatched larva chews its way into the abdomen of the roach and proceeds to live as an endoparasitoid. Over a period of eight days, the wasp larva consumes the roach's internal organs in an order which guarantees that the roach will stay alive, at least until the larva enters the pupal stage and forms a cocoon inside the roach's body. After about four weeks, the fully-grown wasp will emerge from the roach's body to begin its adult life.

And another parasitic wasp that uses mind control:
Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The adult female wasp temporarily paralyzes the spider and lays an egg on her abdomen. The egg hatches into a larva which sucks the spider's blood through small holes, while the spider goes on about her normal web building and insect catching behavior for the next one to two weeks. When the larva is ready to pupate, it injects a chemical into the spider, causing her to build a web whose design is completely different from any she has ever made, and then to sit motionless in the middle of this web. The wasp larva then molts, kills the spider with a poison and sucks its body dry before discarding it and building a cocoon that hangs from the middle of the web the spider has just built. The larva pupates inside the cocoon, then emerges to mate and begin the cycle over again.

This is too cool, anyone know of any other examples?
I'm with Modest, I can't fathom how these traits could have evolved.

[orbsycli]

this is the most bizzare stuff I've read in a long time. good research, mates! thanks for sharing.

[mynah]

Originally Posted by freeztar

Do you have a source for that?

Heard it on a local TV programme. So far I haven't found anything online except two passing mentions of the zebra/parasite symbiosis - just an awful number of sites devoted to zebra mussels... I'll keep on looking, though.