Her book, “The Five Kingdoms”, an introduction to taxonomy and a survey of all known life forms at the kingdom/phylum level, is a masterful and delightful read, as well as an excellent shelf reference.

Its available in paperback, I highly recommend it.

Apparently even some of our basic cellular design may originally have come from “colonist” organisms.

Check this Wikipedia article out.

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Our body is filled with micro-organisms that help us digest our food, help stimulate our immune systems, and perhaps even help us fight off invaders. I wouldn’t doubt they do a lot more, too. I know doctors warn us that keeping overly clean and excessively antibacterial can make us vulnerable to infection. And in some cases, some diseases, like sickle cell anemia, give some protection to malaria, although that is a mutation, not actuyally a disease.

I bet we are commensal with many bugs, although we don’t feel the need to study them as intensely so we know little about them.

“We are all a multitude.”

I could think of few better ways a successful organism could spread itself than by enhancing the sexual activity of its host…

I used to wonder why there weren’t any “good” diseases. Why don’t diseases improve the organism they infect instead of wreck it? You’d think this would improve the survival of the disease organism, but nobody ever catches something that makes you better than you started out.

It was a Cuban, Dr Carlos Finlay, who first suggested the link between mosquitoes and yellow fever, even identifying the responsible species. He was able to confirm that link with geographical and epidemiological studies, but the long incubation period of the microorganism made it imposssible for him to prove a direct link using human volunteers. US doctor Walter Reed ran the volunteer program that finally settled the question, and he is generally given credit in the USA for this discovery.

His hypothesis and exhaustive proofs were confirmed nearly twenty years later by the Walter Reed Commission of 1900. Finlay went on to become the chief health officer of Cuba from 1902 to 1909. Although Dr. Reed received much of the credit in history books for “beating” yellow fever, Reed himself credited Dr. Finlay with the discovery of the yellow fever vector, and thus how it might be controlled. Dr. Reed often cited Finlay’s papers in his own articles and gave him credit for the discovery in his personal correspondence.

Although Dr Reed certainly acquitted himself honorably in this issue, the Cubans never forgave the Americans (actually, the Hearst press) for stealing credit for the discovery that saved so many lives worldwide, and made the construction of the Panama Canal possible.

Dr. Finlay was a member of Havana’s Royal Academy of Medical, Physical and Natural Sciences. He was fluent in French, German, Spanish, and English, and could read Latin. His interests were widespread and he wrote articles on subjects as varied as leprosy, cholera, gravity, and plant diseases. But his main interest was yellow fever, and he was the author of 40 articles on this disease. His theory that an intermediary host was responsible for the spread of the disease was treated with ridicule for years. A humane man, he often took on patients who could not afford medical care. As a result of his work, Dr. Finlay was nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, but it was never awarded to him. He received the National Order of the Legion of Honour of France in 1908.

I doubt the list in the article is complete, and I doubt whether the full list of infections carried by mosquito is even known to science.

In general, I do know parasites (and diseases qualify) are highly evolved for specific hosts and vectors, so it is not likely a new disease could hitch a ride on a mosquito. It usually takes a long time for the parasite to evolve defenses against both the host and vector’s immune defense systems.

I just saw something very interesting on CNN. There is a fungus native to Nepal that invades certain insect nervous systems, altering its behavior so the insect burrows into the ground and dies, and the fungus then feasts on its victim’s bodies until it is ready to sprout a fruiting body for its own reproduction. This bizarre parasitic strategy has been described in the Amazon rain forest, where fungi hijack ants, but this is the first time I’ve heard of it elsewhere.

The Nepalese bug fungus eventually sprouts, and sends a small spore-bearing stalk out, which has long been used in Nepalese folk medicine.
The word has gone out that this fungus has supposed Viagra-like properties, and there is now a problem with foreigners swarming over the alpine meadows trying to dig it up., leaving holes, trampled pasture, and garbage. This is causing conflict between the stockmen who run their sheep on these meadows, and the villagers who have started a bustling cottage industry providing supplies and lodging for the hordes of fungus hunters that have descended on the region.

I guess in nature, we are all hosts and parasites, one way or the other.