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Parasites are everywhere. Why do so few researchers study them?
- ubifreemoney 2y ago[flagged]
- rwmj 2y agoIf you're ever in Tokyo, the Meguro Parasitological Museum is genuinely worth a visit although maybe don't go straight out for sushi afterwards as we did. Pictures of parasites: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/meguro-parasitological-museum https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/meguro-parasitological-m...
- throwup238 2y agoNow you’ve got me curious… are parasites part of any culture’s diet? I’m assuming human parasites are a hard no since it’d be like mainlining the eggs, but are there any parasitic species that we eat? There’s probably more plant ones like huitlacoche but I can’t think of any edible animal parasite. I know there’s Ophiocordyceps sinensis which attacks caterpillars but that’s more traditional medicine than food.
- xyzzy_plugh 2y agoI think you mean parasites that we purposefully eat, but there are parasites everywhere. If you eat raw, or cooked fish, there's a reasonable chance you've eaten (hopefully dead) parasites. But not all parasites are harmful to humans, so you tend to hear less about those.
- philshem 2y agoHere are some examples of parasites that are purposely eaten by humans: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-parasitic-species-some-people-love-eat-180951340/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-parasitic-spe...
- Pompidou 2y agoBécasse paté with tapeworms in France ??? I m french and never Heard of this. And I can't find anything in french about this on internet. I'm sceptical...
- WillyF 2y agoI asked a French friend who comes from a long line of hunters. He'd never heard of it either. There are quite a few French woodcock preparations that include eating the guts, but I've never heard anything about tapeworms. I've also cleaned quite a few American woodcock, and I have never seen a tapeworm in the innards.
- rwmj 2y agoThere's an excellent answer already, but I would like to add mushrooms, since some of them are parasitic (eg ones that grow on trees). So I think: shiitake mushrooms.
- lqet 2y ago> Parasitism is far from easy living; hundreds of millions of years of evolution have prodded parasites to find and manipulate other animals, just as those animals have evolved their own unique methods of survival. Parasites manipulating their hosts is something that really fascinates me from an evolutionary point of view. An example given in the article is T. gondii [0]: > [...] a parasitic protozoan that boasts “Mind Control,” because it attracts its rodent host to the smell of cat urine, where the rat spreads the parasite to felines. Infected mice also have a reduced fear from predators, likely for the same reason. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii
- shagie 2y ago> Infected mice also have a reduced fear from predators, likely for the same reason. In primates, there's some non-fear of cats too. For humans and domestic felines, this isn't much of an issue. For chimpanzees who share territory with leopards, this is more of an issue. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/science/a-parasite-leopards-and-a-primates-fear-and-survival.html?unlocked_article_code=1._k0.9KAd.dP_wjNFuXols&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/science/a-parasite-leopar... (and the paper - Morbid attraction to leopard urine in Toxoplasma-infected chimpanzees https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215015171 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221... )
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y agoAncestral humans shared territory with leopards, and children were vulnerable (1). Big cats are still dangerous. Having a leopard stare at you, even through a fence, does raise the heart rate. But I don't know why we regard big cats so relatively favourably, when an evolved innate repulsion, such as to spiders or snakes, would make as much sense. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack#Leopard_predation_on_hominids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack#Leopard_predati...
- CuriouslyC 2y agoCats are just aesthetically well put together animals. We probably also like the smaller ones due to 5000 years of them predating upon vermin that like to hang around our encampments.
- pcdoodle 2y agoThis should be some interesting discussion since parasites are kind of the hackers of the biological world.
- randcraw 2y agoI thought that honor belonged to viruses.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoViruses are a kind of parasite.
- fifnir 2y ago[flagged]
- hifromwork 2y agoMany mathematicians would get offended if you suggested their work has practical applications.
- elric 2y agoMost mathematicians don't need much in terms of funding. They don't use expensive sequencers, fancy electron microscopes, lasers, particle accelerators etc. Maybe a timeshare on a compute cluster and some disk space, if that.
- drewcoo 2y ago[flagged]
- pydry 2y agoI've often thought that the economics profession could do with more cross pollination with biology. Modeling the economy as a living ecosystem with, for example, a network of parasites and symbiotes would be more illuminating than the default neoclassical mode that almost treats it like a sanitized gaseous system where you turn a dial labeled "interest rates". I'm pretty sure there's a lot of conceptual overlap between parasitic/symbiotic organisms and economic relationships, too. E.g. I'm pretty sure this kind of thing happens all the time in scamming ecosystems: >Often, in an effort to travel between host animals, parasites will expose their hosts to new predators, like the tapeworm Ligula intestinalis, which grows so large it changes the buoyancy of the fish it inhabits, causing the fish to swim closer to the surface and get eaten by birds.
- bflesch 2y agogreat idea, why don't you follow it?
- 015UUZn8aEvW 2y agoIt is in fact a good idea, and it would probably generate a lot of insight. But it would be very politically dicey.
- CuriouslyC 2y agoSounds cool, if you can define economic "symbionts" and "parasites" in a rigorous way I'm sure it would make an interesting blog post.
- bedobi 2y agoI don't disagree with you but economists are well aware of economical parasitism. (rent seeking, negative exernalities, game theory etc etc) The whole point of the field of economics is not as popularly believed to shill neoliberal, neoclassical free markets, it's kind of the opposite - to study all the ways in which economics models (and markets in general) fail (both in the abstract and in the real world) and how to fix that. (and the solutions have been known for decades at this point, but policymakers don't implement them)
- fipar 2y agoThis is an excellent book for anyone that finds this subject interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite_Rex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite_Rex
- bediger4000 2y agoSecond this recommendation! Great book, lots to learn in it.
- gtmitchell 2y agoI immediately Ctrl-F'd for 'funding'. There's your problem right there. If there's no money to support graduate students, you're never going to get enough researchers to replace the ones you have. Additionally, graduate students tend to avoid selecting research areas they dislike or find disgusting. The most disturbing presentation I've ever watched was a slideshow given by a parasitologist in which I saw worms in parts of the human body I never imagined it possible for worms to be in. No wonder students aren't lining up to spend years of their life working with them.
- nemo44x 2y agoThe best way to get funding is for your idea to either have economic potential or to be politically useful. Both of those outcomes generate power. Ideas that don't generate power go to the back of the line when it comes to funding.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> The most disturbing presentation I've ever watched was a slideshow given by a parasitologist in which I saw worms in parts of the human body I never imagined it possible for worms to be in. I read an essay once by someone who intentionally incubated some kind of fly in himself, and wrote that, after all the effort of being infected and incubating the fly, it chose to emerge while he was at a baseball game, where, he lamented, it was immediately killed by horrified fans over his protests. The fans were clearly in the right.
- 082349872349872 2y agoDuring the most disturbing* presentation I ever watched, the simultaneous translation went dead for a good 15-20 seconds; I assumed the translators had muted their mikes to cover the dry heaves? * one could always spot the reconstructive surgeons at these conferences; they were the ones who could wander around the poster session, all while calmly nibbling away at their hors d'oeuvres.
- matheusmoreira 2y agoParasites are neglected tropical diseases. That's an euphemism for "third world shithole problems". These things aren't much studied because there is no actual need to study them. They are solved by civilization. Developed nations solved parasites naturally as they developed. Infrastructure, basic sanitation, standards for food production... All of these things interrupt the natural fecal-oral lifecycle of parasites, solving the problem. Naturally, developing nations are terrible at all of those things. To put it mildly. And thus parasites are endemic. They are literally every day things. It's actually kind of surreal. It doesn't matter how much funding people put into parasitology, it doesn't change the fact the true solution is to develop the nation into a proper civilization.
- rng-concern 2y agoI remember listening to the radio (I believe on cbc canada), and one issue of studying any living thing is, whether your animal/creature of choice is in vogue currently or not. People below have mentioned funding which ties into that, but, if you're studying birds it's a lot easier to publish, there's more of an ecosystem and conferences, etc... than if you were to study some insect that nobody has heard of. Even within existing conferences you might not get "top-billing", even if you're presenting. Pity as the things nobody has ever heard of are probably the most interesting. I wish I remembered more details so could link something.
- mc_maurer 2y agoIt's a pretty widely known thing that studying charismatic megafauna gets you lots of money. However, they're also generally WAY more of a pain to study. Fewer individuals, larger home ranges, expensive permits, etc. A good friend studies basking sharks and the shark research world is insanely competitive, full of crazy type A folks. Compared to the insect ecology world (where I come from), which is full of pretty chill stoners and weirdos.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoMy takeaway is that to be an ecological researcher one must be crazy, weird, or stoned :)
- pvaldes 2y agoMy takeaway is that to be an ecological researcher one must be intelligent, curious, capable and have the desire to help people to live better. cliches are stupid.
- mc_maurer 2y agoPlenty of variability within that subset though! Lots of stereotypes based on your study system lol
- solardev 2y ago"Or"? ;)
- failbuffer 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- photochemsyn 2y agoGenerally research follows funding, not intellectual curiousity. So the single-celled eukaryotic malaria parasite is pretty well-studied. This also highlights the often arbitrary nature of division of labor in academics - all viruses and many eubacteria could reasonably be classified as parasites, but are instead handed off to virology and infectious microbiology (which tends to exclude parasitic eukaryota, even single-celled protists, from its domain). Out in nature, things get more complicated - there are many reports of viruses infecting parasites which in turn infect animals, for example. https://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2011/07/viruses-that-infect-parasites-that-infect-us-the-matryoshka-dolls-of-human-pathogens.html https://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2011/07/viruses-th...
- hammock 2y agoIsn’t there a lot of parasitic research at DARPA facilities, for example Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever?
- harry_ord 2y agoI think Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria rather than parasite (I always assumed the two are different)
- hammock 2y agoYeah, maybe ticks are the parasite in that scenario
- pvaldes 2y agoI understand that the question here is why nobody studies parasite biodiversity. Well, this is a false claim. Sort of. Nobody notices or nobody cares about this researchers, is not the same as nobody studies.
- ekidd 2y agoThe book Parasite Rex (2001) by Carl Zimmer is fantastic, and it inspired quite a few researchers to go into the study of parasites: https://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Rex-Bizarre-Dangerous-Creatures/dp/074320011X https://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Rex-Bizarre-Dangerous-Creatu... The book manages to be gross and fascinating and occasionally beautiful. Given the age, I'm sure some of the science is outdated, perhaps even by people who grew up reading the book. But it remains one of my favorites, and it's an accessible read. If not always a comfortable one!
- biotinker 2y ago> it inspired quite a few researchers to go into the study of parasites That was me! First I read Peeps by Scott Westerfeld when I was ~13, where ever odd numbered chapter is the story, and every even numbered chapter describes a different parasite. At the end of the book was a blurb that said "if you enjoyed the parasite chapters, go read Parasite Rex, which I did. I loved it. That book inspired me to take AP Bio, then get degrees in molecular biology and bioinformatics. In college I did research on a few different species of parasitic wasp for a couple years. I've written the wikipedia page for two different parasitic wasps and given numerous presentations on my favorite wasps. The wasps are more of a spare time passion these days, though. It's much easier to make a living with bioinformatics and robotics. I still keep my (well-worn) copy of Parasite Rex on the nightstand.
- scientator 2y agoThe tradition in parasitology of self-experimentation -- swallowing unknown larvae to see what they do to your body -- perhaps might deter new recruits from entering the field.
- londons_explore 2y agoPerhaps because we have probably already discovered pretty much every parasite that infects humans, at least those with widespread impact in the western world? Parasites tend to be multicellular and relatively large (you can see them all with an optical microscope), and therefore hard to miss. On the other hand, there are plenty of bacteria and viruses that are out there still to be discovered, many of which directly impact humans.
- mschuster91 2y ago> Perhaps because we have probably already discovered pretty much every parasite that infects humans, at least those with widespread impact in the western world? The thing is, discovering them is not enough, not by far. We know how to avoid a few of them - say, by washing hands, regulatory agencies requiring meat be controlled for parasites (in Germany and possibly EU, against trichinella [1]), or by heavily suggesting pregnant people not handle cat litter (to prevent toxoplasmosis). We know how to treat a few of them (mostly worms). But we don't know how to treat a lot of them, for some of them (particularly in the veterinarian world) we're dealing with resistency developing. And a few of them remain utterly and completely deadly (Naegleria fowleri). The problem is, as always, a lack of funding. No one wants to spend much money on parasitology (as you said: we know about most of them), and since most parasitic infections are rare in Western countries that have the money, there is not much money for treatment R&D - no matter how many people die each year worldwide (400k for worms, 600k for malaria alone). [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinenuntersuchung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinenuntersuchung
- nine_k 2y agoMalaria in particular is a target of constant attention. Latest breeds of generically modified mosquitoes are unable to carry the disease [1] or that turn the carried mosquito populations infertile [2]. I'd say that malaria will be eradicated in 30-50 years. Hopefully, Guinea worm will be eradicated, too [3]. Neither malaria nor Guinea worm affect "Western" (rich, industrial) countries directly, but people from these countries most actively work on the eradication, chiefly financed by charitable funds. [1]: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/239931/mosquitoes-that-cant-spread-malaria-engineered/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/239931/mosquitoes-that-cant-... [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18974 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18974 [3]: https://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/index.html https://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/index.html
- helpimkidnapped 2y ago[flagged]
- skyyler 2y agoThis seems highly personal.
- helpimkidnapped 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hello_computer 2y agoWe can acknowledge the effects on rat sexual arousal, but to extend this research into human behavior is just asking to get your funding cut and be excommunicated. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro1687 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro1687
- fsckboy 2y agoFTA: >Why do so few researchers study them? >In the fall of 1985, Scott L. Gardner found himself standing over his toilet bowl, fishing around in the squishy output of his empty bowels with a chopstick. fsckboy's law of headlines: If the headline asks a question, check if the first sentence has your answer >...Gardner was prescribed an antiparasitic pill, and the next morning, he pooped out his intestines’ inhabitant—all 12 inches of it. irl, my brother got a parasite once, a tapeworm. This was all without leaving an upscale suburb of Boston. Only "noticed" it when he, a well-built vigorous athlete, lost a lot of weight out of the blue. It was eating his lunch, so to speak.
- kardos 2y ago> It was eating his lunch, so to speak How does that work. A tapeworm is pretty small relative to your brother (eg by mass), one would think it's caloric needs are similarly small and it would just use a small fraction of his food. Can a tapeworm really consume a significant fraction of an adult's food?
- fsckboy 2y agothere are different types of tapeworms that infect different hosts. cattle tapeworms can grow to 12 feet and much more. It doesn't take much googling to find claims of 100 feet. google "tapeworm symptom loss of weight" and you will get the recommendation "time to see a doctor"
- gwern 2y agoSo the explanation would be that growing is just very metabolically expensive and that is where the deficit goes to?
- fsckboy 2y agoI'm no expert on invertebrate metabolism, but it does not need to be more expensive than host metabolism, it's simply a redivision of the pizza-pie with more slices going to the growing worm, and fewer slices for the host.
- randcraw 2y agoThere's not much profit in treating parasites, and profit funds research. Like bacterial infection (before the rise of resistant bugs), you treat a parasite with a few doses and you're done. No more disease means no more revenue. So unless a really large fraction of the high income world gets a parasite, or the parasitism is chronically incurable, there's too little financial reward to justify studying or treating it.
- bordercases 2y agoIf parasites were widespread amongst human beings, would those infected humans have incentive to study them? We are likely biased and can't imagine how we are biased because of the infection! Yet the over-under for an individual is clear: try the medication and find out!
- dsign 2y ago>> would those infected humans have incentive to study them? Plenty of diseases get us and most of us don't have an incentive to study what we know is statistically likely to kill us :<< . Which I think is a shame.
- pvaldes 2y agoThe amount of grants that you receive in modern zoology is directly proportional to the sweetness in your discourse, the size of the eyes and the density of the fur in your subject > Housed in a few modest rooms adjacent to a botanical collection and the floor’s only bathroom, the laboratory is the world’s largest university collection of parasites. > the Manter Lab only receives enough funding to employ the two men This explains why perfectly. Researchers that choose this live basically in poverty, so why would you to encourage your son to follow that career?. This and the two billions of videos of cats on internet that everybody consumes actively all the time. Try to earn sympathy and views with a samba dancing flatworm compilation instead. It only works one or none times.
- a_wild_dandan 2y agoMaybe we could try a hybrid pitch? “We need to protect these cute, furry little dudes…from parasites. Giv money pls.”
- pvaldes 2y ago"Parasites evolved for millions of years in this planet have exactly the same right to exist and to be saved as any other earthlings. Stop hitting me just because you don't like the truth, please". More realistic. They are a big part of earth biodiversity and provide services to the ecosystem or the host. Services that sometimes no other can provide. Some parasites can clean in theory the host body of poisonous mercury. Could we train parasites to eat cankerous tumors in the future?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- morninglight 2y agoTWiP: This Week in Parasitism A podcast about the tiny creatures that live on and inside us. New episodes the 1st and 3rd Friday of each month. https://www.microbe.tv/twip https://www.microbe.tv/twip
- ricketyricky 2y ago[flagged]
- hinkley 2y agoSomeone did a book like the Secret Life of Trees but just for Oaks. There are a thousand critters and microbes adapted to oak habitation and/or parasitizing. The tannins in oak are an arms race to slow many of them down. As is the thick epidermis on mature leaves. And then there are the adaptations to prioritize roots over leaves when young, which both helps them tap into the wood wide web but also I suspect helps them deal with deer. Stay small until you can get tall and then jump out of reach as fast as you can.
- gumby 2y agoI recommend the funny and gross book, "New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers: Tales of Parasites and People" by Robert S. Desowitz. Basically a bunch of horrible parasite diseases, some with a bit of detective story to figure out.
- blueprint 2y agobecause they're oh so disturbing the same reason why so many other disturbing things go unstudied like certain risks to our survival, for example i think it's a vuln humans have
- eigenrick 2y ago>Why do so few researchers study them? Because they're the ones funding medical research! nyuk nyuk! Seriously though, as a health nut who tries to stay on the science side of things, I still see a lot of "It's Parasites!" stuff from the pseudo-science health community. As well as bizarre cures. Walnuts, Cloves and electric shock seem to come up the most. I have tried to find any practical advice regarding detection, symptoms and such, and beyond tapeworms, heartworms and hookworms, there isn't much information.
- lamontcg 2y agoWell, researchers mostly use the subjects which are available which tends to be broke college students, studying corporate executives is more difficult.
- DrMiaow 2y agoIn my (hobby) field of artificial life and program generation, there is a lot of research into the energy dynamics of parasitism.