The organisms that parasitize humans include fungi, leeches, lice, viruses, protozoa, tapeworm, etc. Few organisms such as Helminthes live inside the intestine of the host and causes several infectious diseases, such as jaundice, malnutrition, diarrhoea, etc. All the infections are caused by viruses and bacteria.
Examples of parasitism are the helminths (worms) in the intestines of the host, lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) in human head, Plasmodium species transmitted by anopheline mosquito and causing malaria in humans.
A few examples of parasites are tapeworms, fleas, and barnacles. Tapeworms are segmented flatworms that attach themselves to the insides of the intestines of animals such as cows, pigs, and humans.
The organisms that parasitize humans include fungi, leeches, lice, viruses, protozoa, tapeworm, etc.
Some examples of common marine parasites are copepods, isopods, monogeneans, digeneans, nematodes, cestodes, and acanthocephalans. Viruses and bacteria are also considered to be parasites.
Lesson Summary
Ectoparasites (like mosquitos, ticks, and head lice) live on the skin of the host in an area where they can easily feed off the blood of the host. Endoparasites (like tape worms and roundworms) live inside the body of the host and benefit from the nutrients found within their digestive tracts.
Examples of common parasites found in the ocean include nematodes, leeches, and barnacles. That's right—though barnacles exist commensally with whales, they are parasites for swimming crabs. A barnacle may root itself within a crab's reproductive system.
There are three main classes of parasites that can cause disease in humans: protozoa, helminths, and ectoparasites.
There are a number of parasites that cause diseases in humans. Parasitic diseases are most common in developing countries in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world (Figure 3). These places are often hot and humid, conditions which are suitable for the growth of many parasites.
Answer and Explanation: An example of parasitism in the rainforest is the strangler fig tree and their host trees. Strangler figs are a category of fig tree that wrap around a host tree and form a hollow shell. The fig tree outcompetes the host for sunlight and nutrients, smothering it.
Fish get infected with parasites when they feed on intermediate hosts. The definitive host for fish roundworms are marine mammals like seals and dolphins and birds that feed on fish like cormorants and seagulls. These hosts shed eggs in their faeces which hatch into larvae in the water.
Parasitism examples range from annoying mosquitos that bite you when you're outside to fleas and ticks biting dogs to fungi attached to trees and barnacles living on a crab's shell. By definition, parasitism is where the parasite lives in (or on) a host and causes harm to the host.
Parasitism is a nonmutual relationship between two organisms in which one benefits at the expense of the other. There are two types of parasites affecting living organisms: ectoparasites (living on the surface of host) and endoparasites (living in the body of host).
A parasite is an organism, or living thing, that lives on or inside another organism. It depends on the other organism for food and other things that it needs to live. The parasite's victim is called its host.
Tapeworms and Flukes
Several cestodes (tapeworms) and trematodes (flukes) are parasites on freshwater fish. One such tapeworm is Ligula whose life cycle consists of several stages which are parasitic in turn on crustaceans, fish and birds. Fish infected with Ligula exhibit grossly distended abdomens.
Ichthyophthirius multifilis parasite, known as Ich buries under the skin causing little white bumps on skin, gills and fins, rapidly spreads to the other pond inhabitants. The nodules look like grains of salt, each nodule is a parasite feeding off your fish.
In a parasitic relationship, one organism benefits at the expense of another. For example, mosquitoes drink human blood, which causes humans to get itchy and can even get them sick.
Nematodes (roundworms), cestodes (tapeworms), and trematodes (flatworms) are among the most common helminths that inhabit the human gut. Usually, helminths cannot multiply in the human body. Protozoan parasites that have only one cell can multiply inside the human body.
Are Mosquitoes Parasites? In biological terms, organisms that live on a host and depend on it to survive are parasites. Even though they feed on their host's blood, mosquitoes do not live on their hosts as do head lice, for example.