• Question: why are parasites in todays world so important? how many species of parasites are there in the world?

    Asked by Nikkita to Franco on 14 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Franco Falcone

      Franco Falcone answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      Nikkita

      If you include viruses which are also parasites, it should be clear why they are so important. They are everywhere, everyone is infected with them, plants, animals, even parasites have parasites, and even viruses can be infected with viruses (check out Mimivirus and Mamavirus/Sputnik virus on Wikipedia for examples of parasites of parasites) . So on one hand they are incredibly important from a medical point of view, with a potential to wipe out entire populations (think of the swine flu pandemic in 1918, which killed 3-5 of the world population). On the other hand they play very important roles in biology. But there is nothing new about them, parasites have existed for a loooong time.

Comments

  • Photo: Mark

    Mark commented on :

    To add to Franco’s point, parasites are an incredibly important part of the global food chain because of their biomass and contribution to changing behaviour of prey animals (e.g. mice) to make them easier for predators (e.g. cats) to catch them