Parasite of the Day

The bonefish  is a popular recreational species for catch-and-release fishing. It is targeted by anglers using fly rods or light tackle, an...

Tongue-biters are among the most (in)famous parasites found in fish, but they aren't the only type of isopods that parasitise fish, nor ...

The study in this post takes us to one of the darkest corners of the deep sea, over 7000 m below sea level in the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench, lo...

At the top of this blog, there is a quote by Jonathan Swift about how fleas have smaller fleas that bite them. Indeed, parasites becoming ho...

Gnathiidae is a family of parasitic isopods that can be considered as ticks of the sea. I make that comparison not only because gnathiids a...

Crabs have some pretty scary parasites infecting them. They range from worms that use them as vehicles to complete their complex life cyc...

Parasites with complex life-cycles often use predator-prey interactions to facilitate their transmission. They have larval stages which infe...

Pea crabs ( Pinnotheridae ) are tiny crabs that have evolved to live with or within larger aquatic invertebrates. Some species take up resid...

It is no secret that I am a big fan of parasitic isopods , especially those in the Cymothoidae family - the most well-known of which is th...

The tongue-biter Cymothoa exigua is arguable one of the most (in)famous fish parasite in the world. It was famous enough to get a mention o...

Today's blog post features a study in which an infestation at an aquarium allowed a group of scientists to work out the life cycle of a ...

Photo from Figure 1 of the paper The parasite in the study being featured today makes a living riding around on the top of a fish's ...

The word parasite has a lot of connotations associated with it, and "maternal" is certainly not one of them. To most people, the t...

The harmfulness of parasites to their host is not always so straightforward, there are often many factors which contribute to the pathology ...

Nerocila acuminata is a parasitic isopod related to Cymothoa exigua , the infamous "tongue-replacer" . While N. acuminata doesn...

Parasites don't always have things go their own ways. Even in the parasite world, sometimes the hustler gets hustled. There are parasite...

TThe parasite for today is a parasitic isopod belonging to the family Gnathiidae - the larvae of this particular species feed upon the requi...

Cymothoa exigua is a parasitic isopod with a very odd and gruesome life cycle. Juveniles first attach to the gills of a fish and become ma...