Zombifying fungi, Hitch-hiking parasites, and making the most out of your hosts

It's been another year and as usual there were many interesting studies on various parasites that were published in peer-reviewed journals - far more than what I ended up writing about for the blog. While papers about parasites are usually published in Parasitology journals - as one would expect - because parasitism is a life style rather than a taxonomic group, there were also many studies that were published in various evolutionary, ecological, and multi-disciplinary journals.

So I've tried to browse widely to find papers which would make for an interesting story and can be written up in a reasonable timeframe. So what are some of the highlights from 2017?

Of the papers that I did manage to write up, some of them were on fungi that infect and zombify insects and other terrestrial arthropod, there are ants, beetles, even millipedes that have fallen under their spells - admittedly, I do have a soft spot for those fungi, so in a way I have fallen for them too.

And the fungi did not have a monopoly on the insect killing business - this year, the blog featured two separate studies on parasitic nematodes that turn an insect's innards into a soupy baby food for the next generation of killer worms. They have many ways of doing so - the main way is with help of a bacterial ally, but some species also have an arsenal of toxins.

But microbes are not the only allies that are enlisted by parasites, one post featured a flea that hitch a ride on earwigs to reach bats. Being able to arrive at a new host is a vital part of any parasite's life-cycle, and while that bat flea uses an earwig to get there, there are many other ways to accomplish that end. This year there were blog posts on two turtle parasites - a copepod and a blood fluke - which have evolved very different ways of reaching their marine reptile hosts amidst the oceanic expanse.

While the size of those parasites are minuscule compared to their rather large host, other parasites can reach alarmingly large sizes in proportion to their host. Some parasite take up so much space that they represent a major drain on their host's resources, and become parasitic castrators. The rhizocephalans is one such example and when it comes to body-snatching, these parasitic barnacles give the insect-zombifying fungi a run for their conidia. There's a good reason for being so imposing upon their host, as the more space they take up, the more eggs they can produce.

Those barnacles have a network of tendrils that can squeeze through the nooks and crannies of the host's body, but if the host doesn't provide you with a space, then you have to make your own, as with the case of a parasitic snail that lives in the spines of a sea urchin. Often, getting through life as a parasite is all about making the most out of the living condition that you've been dealt with. Whether you happen to be parasitic plant that spends your whole life underground except when it comes to flowering, or flukes living in the brain of some endangered fishes, or a seal parasite that has found itself living in the gut of a penguin.

Amidst the zombifying fungi and body-snatching barnacles, it is important to remember that not all parasites are nearly so deadly or harmful to their host. In fact, one of the post featured a downright benign parasite - a fungus that live as an external hyperparasite on bat flies, which are themselves parasites of bats. There was even a post featuring a parasite that live in the gut of cat fleas and helps it reach maturity more quickly to start producing more baby fleas - after all, more fleas means more hosts for that parasite.

Both of those parasites happen to be parasitic on ectoparasitic blood-sucking insect - so it looks like those hyperparasite are showing those insect killers mentioned earlier in this post that there is more than one way to make the most of your host

So that does it for 2017! As I hinted at the start of the post, there is only so many papers I can possibly cover in one year - let's hope there's more to come next year so I can continue to bring you more parasite stories! Meanwhile, I often tweet about the parasitology (and other) papers that I didn't get to write up as a full post at @The_Episiarch - so you can go there to see more.

In August, I was also interviewed for the In Situ Science podcast where I talk about parasites (for a bit anyway, we ended up talking about sciart, social media, and many other things), and of course, those who follow my work online for long enough (especially on Twitter) would also know that in addition to science, I also do art, and sometimes my science intersects with my art to create... Parasite Monster Girls? Since I do plan on continuing to draw Parasite Monster Girls in 2018, I guess in addition to blog posts about parasites, that's another form of parasitological content that you can look forward to seeing from me in the new year...

See you in 2018!