Social parasites

Social Behavior and Parasites

Polistes wasps and their social parasites: an overview

Severe brood care costs have favoured the evolution of cheaters that exploit the parental services of conspecifics or even heterospecifics in both birds and social insects. In Polistes paper wasps, three species have lost worker castes and are dependent on hosts to produce their sexuals, while other species use hosts facultatively as an alternative to caring for their own brood. This paper offe...

Infection with Helicobacter pylori and parasites, social class and cancer.

Three genera of parasites are known or suspected risk factors for cancer in humans: Schistosoma, Opisthorchis and Clonorchis. No adequate information is available on the determinants of infections related to social class. Infection with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is an important cause of stomach cancer. Studies, in particular from the United Kingdom and the United States of America, stro...

Parasites

Despite their large size, protozoan parasites are particularly adept at avoiding the unwanted attention of their hosts. This remarkable ability highlights the need for equally clever strategies to prevent and treat infection. With parasitic diseases such asmalaria and sleeping sickness affecting manymillions in the developing world, recent research in genetics and cell biology provides us with ...

Biliary parasites.

Parasitic diseases of the biliary tract occur frequently in tropical and subtropical areas and cause high morbidity and mortality. In general, neither the clinical presentation nor the general laboratory findings are sufficiently unique to raise the possibility of a parasitic biliary infestation in the mind of the surgeon. Once considered, however, the presence of a parasitic biliary infestatio...