Parasite detection and quantification in a variety of marine species

When thinking about marine parasites, most people picture repulsive worm shaped creatures crawling inside the body of the host. I am sure you do too and not so long ago I was like you.

Thanks to my Professional Practice, I discovered the marine parasite universe by building a case study dataset about them. Let me tell you that there are quite some cunning species that found mischievous ways to use marine species to survive.

I want to show you in this page that marine parasites do not only correspond to the description above nor they are boring. There is actually a vast spectrum of them going from worms, barnacles, amphipods and even fungi-like species! You will find out about some parasite life-cycles that I particularly enjoyed myself while doing my research. Don't worry, they are not all disgusting.

By summarizing 12 case studies, reading more than 40 papers, and writing 3 articles, I learned that marine parasites are very complex and diverse. The examples pictured here represent complex life-cycles with food web transmission, but there can be simpler life-cycles involving only one host. Marine parasites can castrate their host (quite common in crustaceans), can cause human diseases if we eat infected fish (these are called zoonotic diseases) or if we just touch the parasite (E. lineata causes the seabather’s eruption, a skin irritation disease).

However, marine parasites are a key factor in ecological components . They help regulate host populations and exert power over food webs. They are not just here to cause harm. Therefore, without them the whole marine ecosystem would be disrupted.

Not only I improved my writing skills, reading scientific papers and summarized them but also I increased my marine biology knowledge.