The force of natural selection towards parasitic lifestyle is powerful, because it has arisen so many times in every imaginable lineage. For this Halloween and Accidently Parasite Week at #DeepSN, I offer the following marine parasites for your consideration.
Sacculina. You HAVE been assimilated:
.jpg)
Lampreys – because parasitism by invertebrates is for woossies.
For the ladies… Philometra (a nematode) will eat your ovaries from the inside out:
Pennelid copepods, because half a dozen toothbrush-sized copepods jammed in your bum just feels soooooooo good:
Tongue biting cymothoid isopods: because you didn’t need that tongue anyway; it’s not like fish can talk, AMIRIGHT??? :
Schistocephalus. I know, let’s play “How many giant tapeworm larvae can we jam in a 2 inch stickleback?”!:
Diplostomum inside your eyeball. What are you complaining about? Nature gave you TWO eyes, TWO.
Anilocra. “Hey Gary man, you got a little something on your face”:
Cyamid amphipods: Turning whale skin into the Grand Canyon since … well, since evolution
Siphonostomatoid copepods on a flatfish. “I think there’s something in my eye”
Lernaeenicus. “We’re doing the eye thing now right?”
Pomphorhynchus. What, you DON’T have giant yellow worms in your rectum?
Oh, parasites, how wonderful you are. Don’t forget our friend Demodex, who evolved with the mammals and are ubiquitous. Any time I want to gross out my students I just scrape their faces with a bobby pin and put that under the microscope to show them their mites. Not marine, but way cool.
oh yeah – Parasite rex… (thank you Carl Zimmer!)….then there are the ones that invade your brain & take over…Zombies are the new vampires :-P