What Are Parasites?

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A parasite is an organism which lives on or in the host and obtains its nutrients from or at the expense of its host. Parasites can cause diseases in humans and wild or domestic animals. Parasitism is a parasitic and non-mutual relationship in which one member of the association, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other or the other, the host, is harmed. The parasitic symbioses can be classified into many forms including endoparasites which live within the body of host, ectoparasites that live on the surface of host, epiparasites that feed on other parasites and form a relationship known as hyperparasitism, mesoparasites which live in an intermediate position, being half-ectoparasites and half-endoparasites as well as many other forms. …show more content…

For instance, the numbers of snakes, lizards and other reptiles will increase drastically in Malaysia if their parasite, Armillifer moniliformis, which was identified in wild animals and carnivores with infection rate 1.8% and 20.7% respectively has been removed or disappeared in the country. This phenomenon happens because the removal of the parasite species has led to loss of regulation of the host population. Furthermore, removal of a parasite species will also lead to economical or financial problems to the nation as well as the citizens especially in Malaysia. The reason is removal of the parasite species will alter its host population which destroys the agricultures as the host obtains the nutrients from the plants and eventually kills them. The government and the farmers have to spend a lot of money as well as energies to solve the problems so that those agricultures that act as the economic sources can still support the daily life of the farmers and the development of the country. For example, the overpopulation of the beetle Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, also known as red palm weevil, has been ravaging the nation’s palm trees and can potentially decimate the palm oil industry due to the removal of the parasitoid mite, Rhynchopolipus …show more content…

All of these cannot be done and achieved without parasites. If parasites have disappeared in Malaysia, the ecosystems will definitely collapse due to the failure of cycling of energy and nutrients as well as other important ecosystem processes. In a nutshell, a world without parasites is impossible to achieve and even if parasites have somehow all disappeared, other species would evolve to occupy the newly vacant niches. We can try to imagine a world that can help expose the hidden ecological roles of parasites despite its improbability. These roles are hidden due to the ecosystem of a parasite is often nested within the ecosystem that ecologists are accustomed to considering. In order to make the world “less wormy”, a better understanding of how parasites contribute to the communities and ecosystems in which they are embedded is a critical need. Although elimination of a parasite species is possible and highly desirable in some cases, there are many contemporary disease challenges faced by society and imperilled wildlife involve more complex chains of

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