Sacculina pugettiae

Sacculina pilosella is a parasite of spider crabs (Scyra ferox), and while it is technically a barnacle, you're going to have to abandon all your preconceived notion of what a barnacle, or for that matter, an animal looks like in order to understand these parasites. These parasitic barnacles are called rhizocephalans and they are sometimes visible as a blob poking out of a crab's belly. While that is already far from what a conventional barnacle looks like, that's just the parasite's reproductive organ - the rest of its body is composed of an extensive network of roots that spread deep into the crab's body.

Spider crabs infected with Sacculina pugettiae (left) and Parasacculina pilosella (right).
Photos from Figure 2 of the paper

It was previously thought that those spider crabs only have a single species of rhizocephalan barnacle parasitising them, the aforementioned Sacculina pilosella, but DNA analyses of rhizocephalan specimens revealed that the spider crab is actually being tag-teamed by TWO parasitic barnacles hiding in plain sight. Turns out that what scientists have been calling "Sacculina pilosella" is actually two entirely different rhizocephalan species - Sacculina pugettiae and Parasacculina pilosella. It shouldn't be a surprise that their differences have gone unnoticed considering the body of these barnacles is just a blob with a mass of fine roots. Both species share the same breeding season between June to September, during the summer months, and sometimes they even infect the same crab simultaneously.

They do have some minor anatomical differences on the blob-like reproductive organ, but even when compared side-by-side, they can be tricky to tell apart. There is another anatomical feature which might provide a more reliable clue to the parasite's true identity, but that is only visible on a microscopic level. As previously mentioned, the body of a rhizocephalan is a massive network of rootlets, but not all those roots are made the same. Some of the roots, called trophic roots, absorb nutrients and are situated in the host's body cavity.

But the barnacle also grows a different type of roots that invade the host's brain. And it is those brain-invading roots that offer a way of distinguishing those two different species. Sacculina pugettiae has roots that end in microscopic goblets whereas P. pilosella has regularly shaped tapered ends to their brain-invading roots. While the significance of those microscope goblets is not clear, their presence is a reliable way to tell those barnacle species apart.

Often, when two different species of parasites are sharing the same host, this can result in a turf war, especially if they are body-snatchers that take up much of the host's body. Some parasites have even evolved specialised stages to fight off competitors. Since rhizocephalans have extensive roots that proliferate throughout the host's body, you would think that two such parasites living in the same crabs would inevitably end up butting heads (well, roots) with each other. But that's not what the scientists found. Somehow, these barnacles were able to share the same crab without conflict, both being able to successfully grow and reproduce, their rootlets intertwined with each other as they tickled the host's brain stem and absorb the crab's lifeblood in harmony.

Reference:

Lianguzova, A. D., Poliushkevich, L. O., Laskova, E. P., Golubinskaya, D. D., Arbuzova, N. A., Petruniak, A. M., & Miroliubov, A. M. (2025). Two in one: A case study of two rhizocephalan species invading the nervous tissue of one host. Journal of Zoology 325: 185-195.

Rhizolepas sp.

Parasitism has evolved a few different times in barnacles. Most parasitic barnacles belong to a group called the rhizocephalans, which are body-snatchers of decapod crustaceans like crabs and shrimps. Aside from them, there are two other known genera of parasitic barnacles: Anelasma squalicola - which is the bane of deep sea Squaliform sharks, and then there's the barnacle being featured in today's post - Rhizolepas, a rare little crustacean that parasitises seafloor-dwelling aphroditid scale worms. Both of them belong to a group called Thoracicalcarea, which happens to be a sister group to the rhizocephalans.

Left: Rhizolepas in situ attached to its scale worm host. Right: Rhizolepas removed from the host, showing its entire anatomy.
Photos from Figure 1 of the paper.

Rhizolepas has a general shape that broadly resembles typical stalked barnacles that can be found attached to piers or drifting debris, but it lacks the feeding legs that those barnacles use to filter food particles out of the water. Instead, it has a dense network of roots at its base that extend deep into the host's body which it uses to suck up nutrients directly from the host.

This blog post covers a recent study on Rhizolepas, and it's about time too because the last time anyone managed to collected a specimen of this little barnacle was back in 1960. The Rhizolepas specimen in this study was collected during a trawl in the seas off Kagoshima, southern Japan. Out of the ten Laetmonice scale-worms that were collected by the trawl, only ONE of them was infected with Rhizolepas. This provided an amazing opportunity to find out more about this rare little barnacle, so the scientists carefully removed the barnacle from its scale worm host and preserved it in high-grade ethanol for further DNA analyses.

How did Rhizolepas get to be the way it is now? Looking at its morphology is of relatively limited value - evolving towards parasitism does weird things to an organism's body. It is a process that turns copepods into fleshy blobs, and transform snails into sausages. So trying to work out the evolutionary origin of something like Rhizolepas based on its anatomy is an exercise in futility. But while its anatomy may have been modified beyond recognition, its evolutionary history is recorded in its DNA.

DNA analysis revealed that Rhizolepas' closest relatives are Octolasmis - a genus of goose barnacles that spend their lives attached to all kinds of different animals, including the shells and gills of crabs and the skin of sea snakes. The study also found another barnacle called Rugilepas, is actually nested among the various species of Octolasmis, and it provides a perfect transitional model for how Rhizolepas might have evolved from a regular stalked barnacle into a fully committed parasite.

Rugilepas lives on sea urchins, but they don't simply attach to their host, their presence induces a gall on the sea urchin's body which snugly encases the barnacle. However, unlike other gall-inducing animals in sea urchins, Rugilepas is walled off from the urchin's internal anatomy, and doesn't draw any nutrients from its host. Furthermore, while its feeding limbs are significantly reduced, they are not completely useless like those in Rhizolepas and Anelasma. So between Octolasmis and Rugilepas, we can get an ideal of the evolutionary steps that Rhizolepas might have taken on its path to becoming a parasite of scale worms

Based on its level of DNA divergence from other barnacles, Rhizolepas is estimated to have originated about 19 million years ago, during the Miocene. Given the external part of this barnacle no longer performs its ancestral function of feeding, the potential next step in their evolution would be to get rid of any dangly parts altogether, and become completely internalised within the host like their rhizocephalan cousins.

Barnacles are particularly pre-adapted for flirting with or even becoming completely committed to a parasitic lifestyle. Even among non-parasitic barnacles, these crustaceans are remarkably versatile in attaching to different living substrates, from sponges and corals, to whales and turtles. Perhaps this versatility gives barnacles an advantage in taking the next step from a mere hitch-hiker into a full-blown parasite. Since the oldest known barnacles date back to the mid-Carboniferous period around 330 million years ago, who knows what other marine animals they might have attached to or even parasitised throughout Earth's history?

Reference:

Watanabe, H. K., Uyeno, D., Yamamori, L., Jimi, N., & Chen, C. (2023). From commensalism to parasitism within a genus-level clade of barnacles. Biology Letters 19: 20220550.

Allokepon hendersoni

Crabs have some pretty scary parasites infecting them. They range from worms that use them as vehicles to complete their complex life cycles, to parasitic dinoflagellates that turn their muscles into bitter slurry, and on top of those, there are also other crustaceans that can take over their body, and in some cases, castrate them in the process. These body-snatching crustaceans come in two main types - bopyrids and rhizocephalans. 

Top: Bopyrid isopod and an infected crab, Bottom: Rhizocephalan barnacle with infected crab.
Photos modified from the graphical abstract of the paper

Bopyrids are parasitic isopods in the same suborder as the infamous tongue biter parasite, but instead of going into a fish's mouth, they go inside the body of crabs and make themselves at home, often causing a characteristic bulge on the infected crab's carapace. And then, you have the rhizocephalans, which are freaky barnacles that have a body composed of a network of roots which wrap themselves around the crab's internal organs.

Each of them inflict their own respective flavour of pain on their crab hosts.

This study looked at the effects that these parasitic crustaceans have on the two-spotted swimming crab (Charybdis bimaculata), which is host to both parasitic isopods and barnacles. Here representing the bopyrid isopods, we have a species named Allokepon hendersoni. And fronting for the barnacles, is an as yet undescribed species of rhizocephalan. As hinted at earlier, these two body-snatcher parasites seem to have different effects on the crabs - but what exactly are they?

When scientists compared infected crabs with uninfected crabs, they found the effects to be most pronounced in male crabs, with both species of parasites causing a reduction in weight and claw size of their hosts. This is most likely due to the energetic drain associated with hosting these crustaceans, since they can grow to alarmingly large sizes when compared with their hosts. 

While reducing the claw size may leave the host crab less able to compete with uninfected males, on another hand (or claw as the case may be), it would not be in the interest of the parasite for its host to be getting into too many fights and risk injuries anyway, so it can be a beneficial side-effect from the parasite's perspective

But there were some changes which were more specific to particular parasite species. Male crabs infected with Allokepon had a narrower abdominal flap (the triangular flap on the "belly" of a crab). In male crabs, this flap would usually serve to protect the gonopods - which are specialised appendages that arthropods use in reproduction - but given the crab is already hosting such a demanding resident in its body, it wouldn't be getting up to any of that any time soon.

In contrast, the rhizocephalan barnacle had the opposite effect on the crab and widened that flap - this is part of a whole suite of changes that these parasites induce in male hosts. Male crabs that are infected by rhizocephalans develop characteristics which are associated with female crabs in both appearance and behaviour. In female crabs, the wider abdominal flap serves to cradle and brood the eggs before they hatch. So the barnacle essentially "feminise" the male crabs so that they can become better babysitters for the barnacle's offspring.

Fortunately for this crab population, infection rate was very low. Of the 2601 crabs the scientists examined, only 14 were infected with the isopod, and 21 infected with the rhizocephalan barnacle, though the isopod seems to have a preference for infecting male crabs, whereas the barnacle was less discriminate.

But if you are the unfortunate crab that gets infected, you are in for a bad time either way.

Reference:

Corral, J. M., Henmi, Y., & Itani, G. (2021). Differences in the parasitic effects of a bopyrid isopod and rhizocephalan barnacle on the portunid crab, Charybdis bimaculata. Parasitology International, 81: 102283.

Sylon hippolytes

Some of you might have heard of the infamous parasitic barnacle Sacculina carcini which infects crabs and take over their bodies. These barnacles are true body-snatchers in every sense - they divert the host's resources for their own growth and reproduction, and by doing so they end up castrating their host. Additionally, some can also can alter their host's behaviour, making them unwitting babysitters for their eventual spawn.

(A) Shrimp infected with Sylon hippolytes; (B) Internal structure of infected shrimp show its nervous system (n) and the interna (i) and externa (e) of Sylon; (C) Close-up internal view; (D) Close-up internal view with colour-marking.
Photos from Fig 2 of the paper

While it sounds like a gruesome fate for the host, parasitic castration is a very clever way for a parasite to get the most out of the host without killing it. While the host can no longer reproduce, and thus dead from a evolutionary perspective, it doesn't need its reproductive organ to stay alive, but instead it now serves as a walking life support system for the parasite - a walking dead. So just how big can these body snatchers get in comparison with their host?

Sacculina carcini and related parasites belong to a group of very unusual parasitic barnacles call Rhizocephala. Their bodies consist of a network of roots call the interna which wrap around the host's organs, and a bulbous reproductive organ call the externa which sticks out of the host's abdomen. In a previous post I wrote about a study which used micro-CT scans to look at how the these parasites' roots are distributed around the host's organs. In the study featured in this post, a group of scientists compared the anatomy of two different rhizocephalan species and how it relates to their reproductive strategies

The two species they compared were Sylon hippolytes which infects the shrimp Pandalina brevirostris, and Peltogaster (featured in a previous post on this blog) which infect hermit crabs. They collected specimens of both parasites (and their hosts), and prepared them for scanning. After putting the prepared specimens through the micro-CT scanner, they used special software to calculate the parasites' volume and were able to construct a 3D computer model of each parasite along with the internal anatomy of their hosts.

Additionally, they also counted the number of eggs produced by each parasite, and for both species, it seems bigger hosts means more parasite eggs. Both Peltogaster and Sylon grew to about the same size in proportion to their respective hosts (17.78% for Peltogaster, 18.07% for Sylon). But the key difference lies in how much of that mass is distributed between reproductive externa versus the interna root system in the host's body.

The shrimp-infecting Sylon devoted the bare minimum to its interna which is only about 2.5% of the volume of its externa. In contrast, the interna root system of the hermit crab-infecting Peltogaster was about one-fifth of the volume of its externa. So why is there such a massive difference between those two species since they parasitise the host in a similar way? The answer lies in their respective reproductive investments. The Sylon specimens measured in this study had about 1400 to over 22000 eggs, and to produce all those eggs Sylon has to devote a lot more of its mass to its reproductive tissue. In contrast, Peltogaster produced a comparative modest number of eggs, only 371 to 4580.

But why does Sylon put so much into egg production while leaving the bare minimum to the part of its body which is actually embedded in the host? The main reason is that Sylon only gets one shot at breeding - it only ever produce a single brood in its lifetime before it withers away, so it has to make the most of it by having a massive externa. In contrast, once Peltogaster becomes established in a host, it spawns repeatedly and grow a new externa each breeding season, and in order to do so, it needs to invest in a robust network of tendrils which will stay in the host for good.

In this sense, Sylon has a "YOLO" approach to host exploitation and reproduction, whereas Peltogaster is in it for the long haul and so devote more of itself to establishing an extensive root system inside the host. This also has important consequences for the host as well since both parasites places such a massive burden on their hosts - while the demanding presence of Sylon will eventually come to pass, Peltogaster is a persistent body-snatcher that's going to stick around for quite a while.

Reference:
Nagler, C., Hörnig, M. K., Haug, J. T., Noever, C., Høeg, J. T., & Glenner, H. (2017). The bigger, the better? Volume measurements of parasites and hosts: Parasitic barnacles (Cirripedia, Rhizocephala) and their decapod hosts. PloS One 12(7): e0179958.

Peltogaster sp.

Most people are familiar with how barnacles look like - sedentary creatures which filter the surrounding water for food while being stuck attached to rocks or other hard surfaces. Parasitic barnacles on the other hand looks nothing like those creatures. In fact, they don't look anything like what most people would expect an animal to look like. The most well-know example of a parasitic barnacle is Sacculina carcini, but that infamous species is only one of an entire order of such body-snatching parasites that infect crustaceans like crabs and crayfish.

Left: Peltogaster externa attached to their hermit crab host.  
Right: The externa (orange) and interna (green) of Peltogaster in its hermit crab host
Photos from Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 of the paper

These parasitic barnacles belong to a group call Rhizocephala and the body of the adult parasite can broadly be divided into two parts: The "externa" which is the bulbous reproductive organ that sticks out of the host's abdomen, and the "interna" which is found inside their host's body. The interna is a network of root-like tendrils which wrap themselves around the host's organs (hence the name "Rhizocephala" which roughly translates into "root-head").

Most depiction of rhizocephalans have those parasitic roots running throughout the entire body of the host - this is based on an illustration of S. carncini drawn by the famous artist and biologist Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel's original drawing has been copied by many others since it was first published in the book Kunstformen der Natur, and has been treated as the definitive depiction of the rhizocephalan interna. But the thing is, Haeckel has never actual seen a Sacculina in person - he simply based his illustration upon descriptions of the parasite in a monography published in 1884. So while Haeckel's original drawing is iconic and has been replicated countless time in many books, that depiction of these parasitic barnacle is not entirely accurate. Much like tropes in other areas of scientific illustration (such as depictions of extinct animals), Haeckel's depiction of Sacculina has been faithfully and unquestioningly used and copied ever since.

It is understandable that not much is known about the true three-dimensional structure of the rhizocephalan interna - because of its complex and delicate nature, it would be really difficult to tease apart all those roots which are tightly intertwined with host tissue to get an accurate picture of the parasite's extensive root network. But now there is technology available which can resolve this question. In the study featured in this post, a group of researchers used X-ray microtomography to obtain a 3D image of these parasites' root network inside their hosts. They performed this procedure on five species of rhizocephalan barnacles collected from the coast of Norway and the United States; four of the species were hermit crab parasites belonging to the genus Peltogaster, and one - Briarosaccus tennellus - was from the hairy crab.

From the microCT scans, they found that the barnacle's "roots" are not spread evenly throughout the body, but were wrapped around certain organs, with most concentrated near the hepatopancreas  - an organ found in crustaceans which is also known as the digestive gland, which would be prime place to suck up nutrients. And in contrast to Haeckel oft-cited and copied drawing, none of the roots actually penetrate into the muscles. While the roots of the four Peltogaster species were mostly wrapped around the hepatopancreas, the roots of Briarosaccus also extended to the host's brain and central nervous system, which may explain how some of these parasites can manipulate the behaviour of their crustacean host.

Parasite can often manipulate their host's behaviour and physiology to an amazing degree. While many of those interactions are very complex, with the use of techniques such as micro CT, we can begin to unravel the intricacies of how these body-snatchers interact with and manipulate their hosts.

Reference:
Noever, C., Keiler, J., & Glenner, H. (2016). First 3D reconstruction of the rhizocephalan root system using MicroCT. Journal of Sea Research 113:51-57

Briarosaccus regalis

If you come across a crab which has some kind of kidney-shaped blob sticking out of its abdomen and an extensive network of root-like filaments throughout its body - do not be alarmed  - it is merely infected with some kind of body-snatching parasitic barnacle. So let say you then find another crab, of a different species, which seems to have the same affliction. You might think that it is also infected with the same species of barnacle as that first crab. But looks can be deceiving.

Photo from Figure 3 of this paper

Parasites vary in the range of hosts that they can infect. Some are generalists that can infect a wide range of hosts, but the majority are specialists that can only live on a few or even a single host species. With the advent of molecular biology, some of those versatile "generalists" parasites have actually turned out to be a bunch of specialists that each infected their own particular host, but they just happened to look very similar to each other. Such is the case with the parasite we are featuring today - Briarosaccus regalis.

Briarosaccus is a type of rhizocephalan - a group of highly-modified parasitic barnacles - the most well-known example is Sacculina carcini. As you can see in the photo above, rhizocephalans look about as similar to a seashore barnacle as a haggis. The kidney-shaped orange part is the externa - the parasite's reproductive organs. It might not look like much, but it is capable of undergoing at least 33 breeding cycles, producing up to 500000 larvae each time. The rest of this parasite, call the interna, are actually those luxurious green threads which are wrapped around the crab's internal organs.

Not surprisingly, we generally have trouble telling apart what looks like a kidney-shaped blob sprouting a bundle of delicate green roots from other similarly adorned kidney-shaped blobs. This is where DNA can be useful. The new study analysed sections of the mitochondrial DNA of some Briarosaccus specimens from 52 king crabs collected in the fjords of Southeastern Alaska. Previously, the Briarosaccus genus is only known to contain two species, one of which is Briarosaccus callosus which was described in 1882 and has been documented to infect many different species of king crabs, three of which are commercially fished.

Since it infects such a wide range of king crabs, it was assumed to be found across all the world's oceans. But the new study that we're featuring today shows that some specimens which have previously been identified as B. callosus actually consist of two other different species - B. regalis which infects the red king crab and the blue king crab, and B. auratum which is only found on the golden king crab.

It turns out we've been lumping two previously undescribed species together and treating them as if they belong to another species which we are more familiar with. What this study revealed is that instead of just one species (B. callosus) infecting all kinds of king crabs, there's actually a bunch of specialised parasites which happens to look the same to us. While both B. regalis and B. auratum are found in the same region and their respective hosts occur in close proximity to each other, these parasites are faithful their own hosts. Since there are other plenty of other king crabs nearby, why have neither of them made a switch?

Given the extremely intimate relationship that rhizocephalan parasites have with their host - sending delicate roots throughout the crab's body and manipulating their physiology, all without setting off the immune system - they are finely tuned towards their particular host species. So even when there are alternative potential hosts available, neither species can make a switch. From the parasite's perspective, there's no need to do so when your host is so abundant.

During their evolution, many parasites have lost physical characteristics which would otherwise allow us to visually distinguish them from their close relatives. Because of that, their differences may not be immediately obvious to us. The use of molecular biology techniques has enabled us to start seeing the true diversity of parasites - most of which are hidden in plain sight.

Reference:
Noever, C., Olson, A., & Glenner, H. (2016). Two new cryptic and sympatric species of the king crab parasite Briarosaccus (Cirripedia: Rhizocephala) in the North Pacific. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 176: 3-14.

Anelasma squalicola (revisited)

A few months ago I wrote a Dispatch for Current Biology about a newly published study on Anelasma squalicola - a parasitic barnacle that infects velvet belly lantern sharks. Unfortunately for most people, the Dispatch is behind a paywall, therefore I have decided to write a blog post about that study, which in turn is based on the Dispatch I originally wrote for Current Biology, so here it is.

Drawing of Anelasma squalicola and its host by Tommy Leung

The trouble with studying the evolution of parasites is that it is often hard to tell what evolutionary steps they took to get that way. Evolutionary selection pressures experienced by parasites can be quite different to those with a free-living life, thus parasites often bear very little resemblance to their non-parasitic relatives. For example, Enteroxenos oestergreni is a parasitic snail that lives inside a sea cucumber, but the adult stage of this snail is nothing more than a long, wormy string of gonads. To make things even more difficult, parasites are usually small and soft-bodied - which means they are not usually preserved as fossils and unlike say, birds or whales, there is not a good fossil record of various transitional form.

Parasitism has evolved in many different groups of animals, including crustaceans. Various lineage of crustaceans have independently evolved to be parasitic, some of them are so well-adapted that most people would not recognise them as crustaceans if they were to encounter one. Some barnacles have also jumped on the parasitism bandwagon, of which the most well-known is Sacculina which infects and castrate crabs.  The body plan of Sacculina and other rhizocephalans bear little resemblance to the filter-feeding species often found attached to rocks or the hull of ships. Superficially, it resembles some kind of exotic plant (perhaps Audrey II from the Little Shop of Horrors)- there is the bulbous reproductive organ call the Externa which protrudes from the host's abdomen, but the rest of the parasite is actually found inside the body of the crab in the form of an extensive network of roots called the Interna.

Aside from the rhizocephalans, there are only two known genera of parasitic barnacles - one of which is the star of this post. Anelasma squalicola is one of those rare parasites that has retain some remnants of its non-parasitic past. Its host is the velvet belly lantern shark - a deep water fish also known as the shark that warn off predators by wielding a pair of "light sabers". But such armament offers no protection against A. squalicola. This barnacle attaches to the shark's body and burrow into its flesh. Anelasma squalicola digs into the shark using its peduncle - for non-parasitic stalked barnacle, that is the structure they use to stick themselves onto a fixed surface. In A. squalicola, the peduncle embeds itself into the shark's muscles, then sprouts numerous branching filaments that sucks the life blood out of the host. As a shark can sometimes be infected with multiple A. squalicola, this can really take a toll and this parasite has been known to cause host castration.

There are of course, other barnacles that attached to marine animals like whales and turtles, but they are not truly parasitic as they still feed strictly by filtering food from the water instead of feeding off the host like A. squalicola. One group - the Coronuloidea - are specialists at this particular life-style. In fact, some of them do not merely stick to their host, they are partially buried in the host tissue and have special structures to anchor them firmly in place. So it seems likely that the coronuloids might be the predecessor to a full-blown parasite like A. squalicola, right? Even though they have kept up their filter-feeding life-style, they are already embedded in the host's body, so one can imagine that it is only one step away from feeding directly from the host itself.

But as plausible as that story may sound, according to the new study by Rees and colleagues, their analysis shows that the closest living relative of A. squalicola is not the coronuloids but is actually...[drumrolls]...a filter-feeding goose barnacle! The ancestor of A. squalicola seems to have taken up the parasitic life-style about 120 million years ago in the early Cretaceous, when the sea was filled with marine reptiles. It was also during this period that more "modern" sharks underwent a dramatic increase in their diversity. Given the lack of any other known stalked barnacles with similar life-styles and its relatively ancient origin, could A. squalicola be the remnant species from a group that was once far more diverse, rather like the coelacanth or the tuatara?

But what about the Coronuloidea? Why did they not go "full parasite"? Considering the radical changes the ancestor of A. squalicola underwent from a life of filter-feeding to one parasitising a shark, why have none of the coronuloids done the same? Especially seeing how they seem to be in such a prime position to do so.

The affinity of A. squalicola to modern rock-clinging barnacles should remind us that evolution does not always go the way we imagine it to be. You can come up a plausible hypothesis (like A. squalicola evolving from the coronuloid barnacles) that seem rather believable, but ultimately it has to face the data. The evolution history of any organism is a convoluted tale, and sometimes it can challenge our expectations.

References:
Leung, T. L. (2014). Evolution: How a Barnacle Came to Parasitise a Shark. Current Biology 24: R564-R566.

Rees, D. J., Noever, C., Høeg, J. T., Ommundsen, A., & Glenner, H. (2014). On the Origin of a Novel Parasitic-Feeding Mode within Suspension-Feeding Barnacles. Current Biology 24: 1429-1434

For another take on this story, I also recommend Ed Yong's post about the paper here.

Loxothylacus panopei

Photo by Inken Kruse via the Hare Lab

Some parasites can manipulate their host's behaviour in very spectacular ways, but there are also other parasites that change their host's habits in more subtle manners. While such alteration to the host can seem fairly minor, they can still result in some very profound impact on the rest of the ecosystem.

There is a group of parasitic barnacles call Rhizocephala (the most well-known species is Sacculina carcini) that are capable of castrating their host, turning them into unwitting babysitters that nurture the parasites' brood. The infected crab display some very obvious changes to their behaviour, and in some cases, their appearance. But the study we are featuring today shows that apart from turning them into doting mothers for the parasite's babies, these barnacles can also alter the crab's behaviour in less obvious ways that have ramifications for other marine inhabitants.

The flatback mud crab (Eurypanopeus depressus) lives in estuaries on the coast of South Carolina and it is infected by a species of rhizocephalan call Loxothylacus panopei. In addition to doing the usual host castrating and commandeering trick, L. panopei also changes how this crab responds to potential prey. Usually, the mud crab has an omnivorous diet, dining on algae as well as worms, smaller crustaceans, and sponges. Sometimes they may also have a crack at more armoured prey like mussels. But crabs that are infected with L. panopei lose their appetite for such shell-covered fares.

When researchers offered uninfected crabs with piles of mussels, the crabs acted like they were at an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet and ate as much as they can - the more mussels the researchers presented them with, the more they ate. But no matter how many mussels they offered to crabs that were infected with L. panopei, they simply eat one and call it a day. The parasitised crabs also took longer to get their act together and this seems to be related to the size of the crab's parasite - the larger the parasite has grown, the longer the crab takes to start digging into a mussel.

Based on a field survey of the estuary where the study took place, the researcher concluded that about a fifth of the crab at that location were infected with L. panopei. Given the effects that L. panopei has on their crab's appetite for shellfish, it seems that the mussels might have an unlikely ally in the form a parasitic barnacle. The finding of this study share some parallel to another paper that we featured on this blog earlier this year, on the muscle-wasting parasite that infects a predatory shrimp and curb its otherwise ravenous appetite.

Ecosystems are made up of complicated networks of biological interactions and parasites can mediate predator-prey interactions in different, and sometimes conflicting ways. While some parasites can make prey animals more vulnerable or accessible to predators, there are other like L. panopei that may be reducing the appetite of the said predators. The subtle interplay of such parasite-mediated interactions are often overlooked or ignored, but their effects on the ecosystem are certainly there if you know what to look for.

Reference:
Toscano, B. J., Newsome, B., & Griffen, B. D. (2014). Parasite modification of predator functional response. Oecologia 175: 345-352.

May 4 - Anelasma squalicola

While many barnacles can be found using large marine vertebrates such as whales and turtles as substrate for attachment, surprisingly few are actually true parasites of marine vertebrates. However, there's always a species to buck the trend. Anelasma squalicola is a rather strange parasite. This barnacle is a parasite of deepwater squaliforme (dogfish-type) sharks such as the velvet belly lantern shark, Etmopterus spinax. It seems to be rather specific about where it embeds itself in the host, and most Anelasma are found attached near the front or alongside the shark's first dorsal fin, in numbers ranging from one all the way up to four in a cluster.

Unlike the heavily derived order of parasitic barnacles, the rhizocephalan (such as the Sacculina carcini), Anelasma looks superficially like most barnacle, especially the part that protrude from the body of the host, with the exception of the soft body and the lack of calcerous plates. However, the similarity to the usual barnacle ends there. Anelasma has no feeding limbs and the rest of this peculiar barnacle is an onion-shaped bulb inserted into the host tissue. This bulbous structure is equipped with numerous root-like tendrils that infiltrate the host tissue enabling the parasite to absorb nutrienst from its host.

Anelasma severely imparis the development of the shark's reproductive organs. While many parasites are known to castrate their host, and indeed all trematodes castrate their first intermediate host during the asexual stage of their life cycle (see Maritrema novaezealandensis for example and details), this is one of the few known parasitic castrators of a vertebrate host.

For more details see:
Yano, K. and Musick, J.A. 2000. The effect of the mesoparasitic barnacle Anelasma on the development of reproductive organs of deep-sea squaloid sharks, Centroscyllium and Etmopterus. Environmental Biology of Fishes, 59:329-339.

Contributed by Tommy Leung.

January 7 - Sacculina carcini

A great example of a crustacean that parasitizes another crustacean is the barnacle, Sacculina carcini, which is a parasite of crabs. These parasites are favorites of professors as they represent a great example of host manipulation. Sacculina mimics the broods of female crabs, causing her to groom the parasite sac and help the eggs disperse into the water. And if the Sacculina finds itself in a male crab - it just sterilizes it and causes it to act like a female!