Facts about Parasites
Ectoparasites, on the other hand, often have elaborate mechanisms and strategies for finding hosts.
Permanent parasites spend the duration, or a part, of their life cycle in the host.
Hyperparasitoidism can be used for biological control of the pest and parasites.
Mesoparasites are the ones that penetrate external openings, such as the buccal cavity, cloaca, external ear, and so forth.
Many endoparasites acquire hosts through entrance of the tissue, as well as through consumption of raw foods, such as the nematode Ascaris lumbricoides, an endoparasite of the human intestine.
Ectoparasites are those that occur on the body surface of the host, like leeches, ticks, lice, and mites.
Biotrophic parasites cannot survive in a dead host and therefore keep their hosts alive.
Flamingos share parasites with ducks and geese, so these groups are thought to be more closely related to one another than either is to storks.
Necrotrophs are parasites that use another organism's tissue for their own nutritional benefit until the host dies from loss of needed tissues or nutrients.
Temporary parasites (leeches, bed bugs) visit their host only for a short period of time.
On a behavioral level, the itching sensation, and resulting scratching behavior, is also used to fend off parasites.
The majorities of parasites are obligatory parasites and are totally dependent on the host for food, shelter, and/or protection; they cannot survive without the host.
Vertebrate immune systems can target most parasites through contact with bodily fluids.
Facultative parasites can survive without the parasitic mode of life, but can adapt to it if placed in such a situation; they are opportunistic.
Endoparasites are those that live inside the body of the host, such as hookworms that live in the gut of a host and blood parasites.
Accidental parasites are those that happen to infect unusual hosts, other than the normal definite host.
Such as host is found only in the case of digenetic parasites for the completion of larval stage, asexual reproduction, and for transmission to the definitive host.
Some parasites are social parasites, taking advantage of interactions between members of a social host species such as ants or termites, to the hosts' detriment.
Washing one's hands before handling food can reduce transmissions of parasites from pets.
Microparasites are small, generally, unicellular and invisible to the naked eye, such as protozoan parasites.
Macroparasites are multicellular parasites that are visible to the naked human eye, such as helminth parasites (parasitic worms, such as flukes, tapeworms, and roundworms, or nematodes).
Accidental parasites are those that happen to infect unusual hosts, other than the normal definite host.
Wandering or aberrant parasites, instead of arriving at the site of infection in the definitive host, reach an unusual place as a dead end, becoming unable to complete the life cycle.