Virtually all organisms function as hosts for a variety of symbionts that can interact and form complex communities. Recently, research has begun to highlight the influence that symbiont communities can have on human and animal health through multi-symbiont interactions. Here, we examine symbiont community patterns both by host species and specific symbiont interactions in California freshwater...

Parasitism is increasingly recognized as an important determinant of population dynamics, productivity and community structure in intertidal ecosystems, and yet there is very little known about the effect of parasites on polychaetes, which represent a major component of the benthic fauna. We surveyed 11 polychaete species from a mudflat in Otago Harbour, New Zealand, and found that seven of the...

1. In many host–parasite systems, infection risk can be reduced by high local biodiversity, though the mitigating effects of diversity are context dependent and not universal. 2. In aquatic ecosystems, local fauna can reduce the transmission success of parasite free-swimming infective stages by preying on them, acting as decoy hosts, or physically interfering with transmission. However, most pr...

To funistic survey of the cercariae of Melanoides tuberulata (fresh water snail) 1540 M.tuberculata were collected from various streams, swamps, ditches and canals in the central area of Khouzestan province in the south west of Iran. Infected snails, 46 (2.9%), were isolated and cercariae were obtained by emerging or crushing methods and then measuring and drawing were made from specimens. In s...

Life history traits expressed by organisms vary due to ecological and evolutionary constraints imposed by their current environmental conditions and genetic heritage. Trematodes often alter the life history of their host snails by inducing parasitic castration. Our understanding of the variables that influence the resulting changes in host growth, fecundity and survivorship is insufficient to c...

The infection rates of trematode metacercariae were studied in fish from a polishing pond of a wastewater treatment factory and from Bang Yai Canal, Mueang District, Phuket Province, Thailand. The investigation was carried out from April 2001 to April 2002. Nile tilapia (Tilapia nilotica) were collected from the polishing pond, while mullet (Valamugil cunnesius) were collected from Bang Yai Can...

Vertebrate innate immunity is the first line of defense against an invading pathogen and has long been assumed to be largely unspecific with respect to parasite/pathogen species. However, recent phenotypic evidence suggests that immunogenetic variation, i.e. allelic variability in genes associated with the immune system, results in host-parasite genotype-by-genotype interactions and thus specif...

background: a known species lutztrema (lutziella) microacetabularae rhode, 1966 is being described for the first time from pakistan. this species is characterized by having body long and slender, oral sucker subterminal, acetabulum smaller than oral sucker lying in anterior third of the body, pharynx small, esophagus promi-nent which become gradually wider and bifurcates in to two rudimentary c...