#trematode

[it-lives-in-between]

Yellow Diplostomum metacercariae for when I want to learn about trematodes but also want to do art.

[1965cannibalium]

fasciola hepatica under the microscope ૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა

11/21/2023

[zzkt]

What’s interesting about this new digenean parasite is that the larvae cooperate using two different forms. The DNA confirmed that both the sailors and tiny passengers inside the hemisphere belong to the same species. These passengers, it seems, act as the infectious agents, waiting to infiltrate the gills or intestines of a fish that swallows them. The sailors, meanwhile, do the hard work of moving the blob through the water—but in sacrifice their own opportunities to reproduce. This phenomenon, in which one member of a species forgoes its own chance to reproduce so that another can, is called kin selection. And this, says Robert Poulin, a parasitologist at the University of Otago who was not involved, is “a really cool case of kin selection pushed to the extreme.” Scientists have studied the phenomenon in other kinds of trematode parasites while they are living inside their hosts. The “remarkable” new study shows that this division of labor happens in free-living larval forms as well, says Ryan Hechinger, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “This finding highlights that trematodes are unique among all animal life.”

(via https://www.science.org/content/article/mind-boggling-sea-creature-spotted-japan-has-finally-been-identified)

[bio-matter]

So called rattenkönig “RAT KING”, bundles of living, undulating, floating, trematode fish parasites, usually excreted by intermediary hosts such as snails. 

The Rat King legend involves a living knot - made up of entangled rats with their tails completely interlaced together. It was a rare bad omen, usually announcing a scourge such as the black plague. Tiny flatworms also form a living knot - termed "rat king" since on their own they cannot infect their next pray. They tie themselves together, and coordinate their movement. To complete their life cycle, these parasite tie themselves to a living knot so they can be more easily mistaken for food by their next host - ducks or some aquatic bird species. Alone they are invisible, but together these tiny larval aggregates become visible - as cercaria, a visible wriggling floating bait. Baiting may come as a surprise but the parasitic trematodes have to escape their tiny scale problem and the fact that dispersed, isolated they may never find a host. Only as a "rat king" ensemble they can be delineated, targeted and easily perceived. Knotted flowery floaters they can attract, they can entice and lure their hosts. 

[breathinginbiology]

Phylum: Platyhelminthes

Class: Trematoda

Ribeiroia ondatrae is a parasitic trematode (flatworm) with a free-swimming larval stage that prefers to infect in and around the developing limb buds of larval amphibians. This can change or completely inhibit limb development. The limb malformation alter the frog’s ability to jump and swim making them much more susceptible to predators. 

[crisscrosscutout]

But trematodes though--

[astronomy-to-zoology]

Heterophyes heterophyes

...is a parasitic species of Heterophyid trematode that is commonly found in Northern Africa and most of Asia and Indonesia. Adult H. heterophyes will live burrowed between the villi of their host's small intestines, their hosts are typically fish-eating birds and mammals (including humans). H. heterophyes eggs will not hatch until they have been ingested by a snail (usually Pirenella conica in Africa or Cerithidia cingula in Asia) once inside the snails gut the eggs will hatch and become a sporocyst which will produce rediae, which in turn produce cercariae which will exit the snail and swim towards the surface of the water and fall back down. On their way down they will attempt to come in contact with a fish and penetrate their tissue, from here the cercariae will enycst in the muscle tissue until the fish is eaten.

Classification

Animalia-Platyhelminthes-Trematoda-Opisthorchiida-Heterophyidae-Heterophyes-H. heterophyes

Image: Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria team

[tyrelpinnegar]

MY FIRST PUBLISHED WORK!

My microscope photograph of the parasitic flatworm Haematoloechus longiplexus inside the lungs of a bullfrog has been featured in a textbook by Cambridge University Press!

Many thanks to Dr. Tim Goater at Vancouver Island University for providing me with the opportunity, as well as the bullfrog lungs.

Now, off to work on my second published work.