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SACRIFICIAL INTERMEDIATE HOST. "A type of parasitic flatworm targets cockles in New Zealand, driving the marine mollusks to the surfaces of muddy bottoms in shallow waters. There, oystercatcher birds snap the cockles up and eat them, flatworms and all. The shorebirds serve as the final hosts in the flatworms' complex life cycle." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0901_050901_wormparasite.html View in LinkedIn

JUST A STOP ALONG THE WAY. Some parasites use an intermediate host during their life cycle, and in order to travel to the ultimate host, they induce the intermediate host to be eaten by the ultimate host. View in LinkedIn

REPRO CHANGES. "Manipulation of reproductive behaviour has been reported for several parasites. L. boulardi females superparasitize Drosophila larvae (i.e. larvae that have already been parasitized by another female wasp; Superparasitism is supposedly beneficial for the virus, because it permits horizontal transmission between L. boulardi embryos from different mothers." https://lnkd.in/e2g9KSe View in LinkedIn

WALKING LARDER. "Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga is a Costa Rican parasitic wasp that terrorizes the spider Plesiometa argyra. When it's time to procreate, an adult female wasp will seek out a spider, paralyze it and then lay an egg on its abdomen. After hatching, the larva wasp will feed on its host, while the spider goes about its business." https://lnkd.in/evbigMp View in LinkedIn

FUNGUS TURNS ANTS INTO ZOMBIES. "Infected ants drop down from canopy nests and climb up again in understory vegetation to bite into leaf veins before dying. This death grip is timed around solar noon and occurs at approximately 25 cm above the soil surface. This position is optimal for fungal sporulation, where the fungal fruiting body grows from the ant’s brain and releases its spores." https://lnkd.in/e2g9KSe View in LinkedIn

DRIVER'S SEAT. "Moreover, since sexual reproduction of T. gondii can be accomplished only in the feline, there might be strong selective pressure on the parasite to evolve such a mechanism...the formation of parasitic cysts in the brain of its host places T.gondii in a privileged position to manipulate behaviour." https://lnkd.in/eR7NyAm View in LinkedIn

THE IMPRUDENT RAT. "T. gondii’s manipulation appears to alter the rat’s perception of cat predation risk, in some cases turning their innate aversion into an imprudent attraction. The selectivity of such behavioural changes suggests that this ubiquitous parasite subtly alters the brain of its intermediate host to enhance predation rate whilst leaving other behavioural categories and general health intact." https://lnkd.in/eR7NyAm View in LinkedIn

TOXOPLASMA GONDI. Normally, rodents avoid cats. "But when they are infected by toxoplasma the parasite completely changes their behaviour. An infected mouse is attracted to the smell of cat urine and will move out into the open, displaying reckless behaviour. The reason, of course, is the parasite wants the mouse to be eaten by a cat, so it can then infect its new host." https://lnkd.in/e3SVgha View in LinkedIn

LINGUISTIC FLAW. "The crucial difference between a Turing and von Neumann machine and biological cell-based organisms is that the formal language needed to operate machines is not compatible with the natural languages of genetic codes and signalling networks." https://lnkd.in/eeiUHXC View in LinkedIn

SURPRISE FINDING. "The three domains of life diverged billions of years ago and, although the rRNA molecule is conserved for function in the different domains, the nonfunctional parts presumably varied independently in each lineage. Since there is no known sequence homology between the two ribosomal subunits, these subunits have no apparent shared ancestry. It is therefore surprising to see the same patterns of variation across all domains and both subunits." https://lnkd.in/erj2nzZ View in LinkedIn