Tag: parasites

Denmark Museum Highlights UW Entomologist’s Naming of Shakira Wasp

Aleiodes shakirae is one of only 18 animal species featured in a museum exhibition in Denmark.

Nine years ago, University of Wyoming entomologist Scott Shaw and colleague Eduardo Shimbori gained a moment of fame by naming several newly discovered South American insect species for celebrities — including a wasp for singer and musician Shakira (Aleiodes shakirae).

Mummy-making wasps discovered in Ecuador: New insect species named after Shakira and Jimmy Fallon

Today, the Shakira wasp is one of only 18 animal species featured in a museum exhibition in Denmark. “From Rock Fossils to Pop Insects” at the Naturama Museum in Svendborg, Denmark, highlights species named after famous rock musicians and pop stars, including an ancient mammal for Mick Jagger (Jaggermeryx) and a deep-sea crab named for Metallica (Macrostylis metallicola).

This is the panel in an exhibition at the Naturama Museum in Svendborg, Denmark, that highlights the naming of the Shakira wasp (Aleiodes shakirae) by UW Professor Scott Shaw and colleague Eduardo Shimbori.

The exhibition was planned and created by Thomas Berg, a senior scientist and curator at the museum.

“Discover the fascinating old fossils, listen to the music and find out why scientists use rock music when naming fossils,” says a Naturama website promoting the exhibition, which is open to the public for viewing through November.

The Shakira wasp is a parasite of caterpillars, feeding and developing inside them — and causing them to bend and twist their abdomens in a distinctive way, which reminded Shaw and Shimbori of belly dancing, for which the Colombia-born singer also is famous. The Shakira wasp and other insect species were described in a 2014 volume of the international research journal ZooKeys, which is dedicated to advancing studies of the taxonomy, phylogeny, biogeography and evolution of animals.

“It’s gratifying to see our discovery included in this exhibition in such a creative and artistic way,” Shaw says. “I hope this public attention will help to draw new students to studies of tropical insects and the urgent field of tropical forest conservation.”

Berg says he chose the Shakira wasp for the exhibition because Shakira is a world-class singer and musician — and because of the researchers’ story behind the naming of the insect.

“Shaw and Shimbori’s personal story was captivating, with clear references to the parasitic wasp’s effect on its victim,” Berg says. “I’ll also admit that I’m a huge fan of Shakira, and it was such a gift to have the world’s best argument to include Aleiodes shakirae in the exhibition.”

Shakira. Image by MAURICIO MORENO under a

National Science Foundation-funded fieldwork conducted in the cloud forests of eastern Ecuador by Shaw and colleagues led to the discovery of 24 new species of Aleiodes wasps that mummify caterpillars. Some of these were named for other celebrities, including Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Ellen DeGeneres. One of these, Aleiodes colberti — named after Colbert — was featured on the Jan. 22, 2022, segment of Colbert’s “Late Show” on CBS.

A UW faculty member since 1989, Shaw is the curator of UW’s Insect Museum in the College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources. He received that college’s Vanvig Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. He has published more than 200 scientific publications about insects as well as a book, “Planet of the Bugs: Evolution and the Rise of Insects,” which tells of dominant insect species and how they shaped life on Earth.

News piece originally by the University of Wyoming. Republished with permission.

Swimmer’s Itch: what causes this neglected snail-borne disease?

A new study suggests that a cercarial dermatitis outbreak in South Thailand was caused by the blood fluke Schistosoma indicum.

Cercarial dermatitis, also known as swimmer’s itch or clam-digger’s itch, is caused by the larvae of blood flukes that are parasites of birds or mammals. When these larvae, called cercariae, penetrate human skin, they trigger an allergic reaction within 10-15 hours that takes about a week to heal. Unable to mature into adults, the larvae then die on the skin. The gravity of an outbreak depends on how humans and birds or mammals come in contract with the aquatic environment, but people engaged in water activities, such as farmers, fishermen, and agricultural workers, are most likely to be affected.

Cercarial dermatitis cases from Chana district, October 2020

Between August and October 2020, a cercarial dermatitis outbreak with 359 confirmed cases occurred in Chana district, Songkhla Province, South Thailand. It mostly affected rice farmers from the area, who were busy with cultivation during the rainy season. Following a short investigation, three cases of patients were confirmed to be cercarial infections by skin biopsy (Bureau of Epidemiology, Department of Disease Control, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand).

“The study of intermediate host and definitive host in the outbreak area are important for the control program of snail-borne disease,” the researchers argue in their research paper, which was published in the open-access scientific journal Evolutionary Systematics.

Having studied six snail species from the area, they found out that two were infected, each with three different species of flatworms. The cercarial dermatitis outbreak was due to ruminant parasites, such as the blood fluke Schistosoma indicum, which often uses domestic animals as its host.

Collected snails from five locations of cercarial dermatitis outbreak area. a. *Filopaludina s. peninsularis* b. *Filopaludina s. polygramma* c. *Indoplanorbis exustus* d. *Filopaludina m. cambodjensis* e. *Bithynia s. siamensis* f. *Pomacea canaliculat*a (Scale bar: 1 cm).

“Ruminant-infecting trematodes, namely, S. indicum and S. spindale, cause a hepato-intestinal schistosomiasis resulting in reduced milk yield,” the authors explain. “This occurrence of S. indicum and S. spindale implies the spread of cattle blood fluke cercariae in aquatic environments.”

“Additionally, these species of the S. indicum group primarily cause cercarial dermatitis in humans, which has become an important public health issue for people living in endemic regions.”

“In South India and Southeast Asia, where S. indicum and S. spindale have been reported to be widespread, they caused major pathology and mortality to livestock, leading to welfare and socio-economic issues, predominantly among poor subsistence farmers and their families.”

Image of *Schistosoma indicum* Montgomery, 1906 (Syn. *S. nasalis* Rao, 1933) a. Head organ of cercaria stained with 0.5% neutral red (DIC microscopy) b. Body part of cercaria stained with 0.5% neutral red (DIC microscopy) c. Image of unstained cercaria (DIC microscopy) d. Images of cercaria stained with 0.5% neutral red (DIC microscopy) e. Drawing of cercaria structure f. Images of sporocyst stained with 0.5% neutral red (light microscopy) Abbreviations: c: cercaria, eb: excretory bladder, ep: esophagus, fu: furca, h: head organ, i: intestine, pg: penetration gland, sp: sporocyst, ta: tail, vs: ventral sucker.. (Scale bars: 100 μm).

Some of the other worm species they found parasitized the intestines of fish, mammals, or birds, while others caused anemia and even death in ruminant animals.

“The results of this study will provide insights into the parasite species that cause cercarial dermatitis and may improve our understanding of public health problems in the outbreak and agricultural vicinity areas,” the authors of the study say. “In addition, the sequence data generated here are the first S. indicum DNA sequences from Thailand, which will be useful for further genetic study of the other blood flukes in this region.”

Research article:

Krailas D, Namchote S, Komsuwan J, Wongpim T, Apiraksena K, Glaubrecht M, Sonthiporn P, Sansawang C, Suwanrit S (2022) Cercarial dermatitis outbreak caused by ruminant parasite with intermediate snail host: schistosome in Chana, South Thailand. Evolutionary Systematics 6(2): 151-173. https://doi.org/10.3897/evolsyst.6.87670

Images by Professor Dr. Duangduen Krailas.

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Flying jewels spell death for tarantulas: Study of a North American spider fly genus

Spider flies are usually a rarely encountered group of insects, except in Western North America, where the North American jewelled spider flies (the Eulonchus genus) can be locally abundant in mountainous areas such as the Sierra Nevada of California. The brilliantly coloured adults (also known as ‘sapphires’ and ’emeralds’) are important pollinators of flowers.

The North American jewelled spider flies typically have large rounded bodies covered with dense hairs and metallic green to blue or even purple colouration, giving them a jewel-like appearance. Together, the elongated mouthparts, the metallic coloration and the eyes, covered with soft hairs, immediately set these flies apart from any other group of tarantula fly. The mouthparts are greatly elongated to help them feed on nectar from the flowers of more than 25 different plant families and 80 species.

However, their larvae are more insidious, seeking out and inserting themselves into tarantula hosts and slowly eating away their insides until they mature and burst out of the abdomen, killing the spider, and leaving behind only the skin. Once they have emerged from the host, they pupate to develop into adults.

In the present study, published in the open access journal ZooKeys, six species of the genus are recognized in North America, including one from the Smokey Mountains, and five from the West, ranging from Mexico to Canada. Drs Christopher J. Borkent and Shaun L. Winterton, and PhD student Jessica P. Gillung, all affiliated with the California State Collection of Arthropods, USA, have redescribed all of them using cybertaxonomic methods of natural language description. A phylogenetic tree of the relationships among the species is also presented.

The examined individuals include many from the collection amassed by the late Dr. Evert Schlinger (1928-2014) over the span of more than 60 years. Today, the collection resides at the California Academy of Sciences (CAS). “Dr. Evert I. Sclinger was a world renowned expert on spider fly taxonomy and biology,” write the authors in the paper, which they dedicate to the scientist and his legacy.

All of the studied flies are relatively widely distributed, and locally abundant, except for a single species (E. marialiciae), which is known from only a few specimens, collected within a small contiguous area in the Great Smoky Mountains. However, the scientists suggest that future studies are needed to explore whether this is actually their full range.

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Original source:

Borkent CJ, Gillung JP, Winterton SL (2016) Jewelled spider flies of North America: a revision and phylogeny of Eulonchus Gerstaecker (Diptera, Acroceridae). ZooKeys 619: 103-146. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.619.8249