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Estimating the cost of antibiotic resistance to economies and health-care systems is fraught with difficulty, but new research says Australia will be hit harder than we think.
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Pink blood, green blood, or no blood at all – when it comes to what’s inside a worm’s body, the answer is more complicated – and fascinating – than you’d think.
Francesco Veronesi / flickr
The moment a chick hatches from its egg, maggots burrow into its skin to drink its blood, usually killing it. But scientists have found a way to stop the blood-sucking parasites.
A brown Mediterranean grouper. We don’t see it on the picture, but it hosts many parasites!
Parent Géry/Wikimédia
Mediterranean groupers are not alone: they are home to a wide variety of parasites.
Parasites do very well for themselves, which is why they are so common in the animal kingdom.
Geoffrey Read
Mud blister worms make their homes in the shells of oysters and other shellfish, where they weaken their hosts.
Alien vs. Predator/IMDB
In fiction and popular culture, parasitic characters appear as a metaphor for the threat and spread of disease. But they’ve also played for laughs.
We studied 515 million-year-old brachiopod fossils from southern China. These marine invertebrates were common in the geological past.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria (coloured yellow) enmeshed within a human white blood cell (coloured red). MRSA is a major cause of hospital-associated infections.
(NIAID)
Antimicrobial resistance is a public health and economic disaster waiting to happen. If we do not address this threat, by 2050 more people will die from drug-resistant infections than from cancer.
African clawed frogs are very easy to keep in the lab.They were readily adopted by scientists as a model research animal.
Author supplied
The African clawed frog is a notorious invader but it also takes some parasites with it to new regions.
So-dam Park and Woo-sik Choi in their ‘semi-basement’ home in Parasite.
Curzon Artificial Eye
It’s the first non-English language film to win best picture – here’s hoping this is the start of something big for world cinema.
Researchers operate inexpensive drones to ‘see’ the areas with the highest likelihood of parasites.
Chelsea L. Wood/University of Washington
Schistosome worms infect hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Researchers have discovered how to use inexpensive drones to identify disease hotspots in remote African villages.
Oleksandr Rybitskiy / shutterstock
Mythical mistletoe can be traced back to Norse legends.
Giardia is an example of a parasite you don’t want to catch. Symptoms can include diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, fatigue, weakness and weight loss.
From shutterstock.com
There are three classes of parasites that can cause disease in humans. Here’s what you need to know.
Vera Larina/Shutterstock.com
Certain wasps and flies which lay their eggs in specific species such as aphids could be a sustainable form of pest control.
New Africa/Shutterstock
Toxoplasma already infects a third of the world’s population but it’s very hard to study and so treat.
The world’s smallest frog can fit on a dime.
E.N. Rittmeyer et al. (2012)
Scientists have identified the world’s smallest animal – for now. It could be possible smaller creatures exist that have not yet been discovered.
Male (left) and female Heterodoxus spiniger from Borneo.
Natural History Museum, London
Reconsidering an old ecological conundrum comes up with a new perspective on migration, contact and trade in the Australia and Asia-Pacific region.
Leishmaniasis is caused by a parasite that is carried by a female sandfly.
CDC/ Frank Collins
Each year 50 000 people from 89 countries, in every continent except Antarctica, die from leishmaniasis, an ancient neglected disease.
gbohne/Flickr
Tiny fairy wasps are so small they can lay their eggs inside other insects eggs, but they punch above their weight when it comes to keeping pests down.
A Small Tree Finch from the Galápagos Islands with an enlarged nostril caused by a parasite.
Katharina J Peters
An infestation as a chick leads to enlarged nostrils in the beak of Darwin finches, and that affects their mating call.