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Dating app
One tongue-eating louse, Cymothoa exigua, was described in our Halloween comic: Free-swimming, juvenile Cymothoa exigua males attach to...

Apicomplexan Fireworks
Toxoplasma gondii is a single-celled parasite that infects animals. Cyst forms wait in the muscle tissue of intermediate hosts to be...

The Zombie Ant
The lancet liver fluke, Dicrocoelium dendriticum, has a three-host lifecycle. Eggs in feces hatch and infect a snail. There, the larvae...

Halloween
Eggs of Leucochloridium paradoxum present in bird droppings hatch and penetrate through the skin of a succineid snail (Succinea spp.,...

A New Understanding
Sacculina carcini parsitizes crabs, mostly the green crab Carcinus maenas (1). It is most commonly found in Europe, but has also been...

Valentine's Day
Diplozoon paradoxum is a flatworm parasite of fish. Eggs hatch and pass through larval stages where they swim to try to find a fish host....

Back to Life
Ophiocordyceps sinensis, or caterpillar fungus, is a parasitic fungus that infects caterpillars of ghost moths. Permissive hosts include...

The Eyelashes
Phrixocephalus cincinnatus begin their life as free-swimming larvae (called a nauplii) (1). After developing to their next larval stage...

The White Spikes
Cotesia congregata is a parasitoid wasp found throughout North America and South America (1). The wasps parasitize caterpillars of sphinx...

The Red Berry
Myrmeconema neotropicum is a nematode parasite that infects ants. The eggs can also use birds for transportation (a paratenic host). Eggs...

On the Grass
Ixodes scapularis, the deer tick or black-legged tick, must feed on blood at each stage of its development. Consequently, it has a...

The Barber's Pole
Haemonchus contortus females look like a barber’s pole because their white ovaries spiral around their intestine and they consume so much...
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