10 types of parasitic relationships in animals and plants
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In Humans
Over 100 different types of organisms can parasitize humans including fungi, leeches, lice, ticks, mites, tapeworms, protozoa, viruses, and helminths. Helminths are worms that can live inside the intestines and can reach meters in length. They can cause a variety of problems such as malnutrition, jaundice, diarrhea, and even in severe cases, death. However, they can be treated with anti-parasitic medication. All infectious diseases, including the common cold, result from organisms that parasitize humans, such as viruses and bacteria. Many of the organisms that parasitize humans can also parasitize other mammals and birds.
In Plants
Aphids are small green insects that parasitize plants by eating their sap. Many types of fungi can also attack plants and can spoil wheat, fruit, and vegetables. Some plants are parasitic themselves. In angiosperms (flowering plants), parasitism has evolved at least 12 separate times, and 4100 species (about 1%) of angiosperms are parasitic. Parasitic plants have haustoria, which are modified roots which connect to the host plant’s xylem and/or phloem and drain it of water and nutrients. Some plants parasitize mycorrhizal fungi. This often happens when a plant species has evolved to no longer produce chlorophyll. Since it can no longer photosynthesize, it must gain nutrients for energy in other ways.
In Insects
Entomophagous parasites are insects that parasitize other insects. Usually these parasites attack larva, or young insects. Some insects deposit their eggs within the body of another insect species’ larva; when the eggs hatch, the parasitic young kill and eat the larva, gaining nutrients from it. Sometimes, the parent parasite paralyzes a host which is then fed on by the young. This occurs commonly in wasps such as Ampulex compressa, whose young eat paralyzed cockroaches that have been stung by the parent. Other wasps like Ropalidia romandi burrow into the abdomen of their host and then live there. They do not kill their host, but can change its appearance and behavior, and even make it sterile. Parasitism is extremely common in insects. In fact, almost all species of insects are attacked by at least one type of insect parasite.
In Fish
There are many organisms that parasitize fish, and sometimes different populations of the same species of fish living in the same region can be told apart because they have different characteristic parasites. Some parasites, such as copepods (small crustaceans), nematodes, and leeches. attach to the fish’s gills and live there. Cymothoa exigua is an isopod (another type of small crustacean) that parasitizes fish. It enters a fish’s mouth and eventually severs the fish’s tongue. Then, the isopod itself lives where the tongue was, and becomes the new tongue. The host fish can still eat, and will survive with an isopod in its mouth, but the isopod consumes a small amount of the fish’s blood and mucus while living there. Cleaner fish like bluestreak cleaner wrasses remove dead skin and parasites from other fish, including large predatory fish that would otherwise eat them. Fish parasites in can be a concern to human health when people eat foods that contain uncooked fish, such as sushi, because the parasites in these fish can also infect humans. However, infection through eating uncooked fish is relatively rare in the developed world, and some raw fish is frozen overnight to prevent infections.