Parasites
Tarebia granifera serves as the first intermediate host for a variety of trematodes in its native south east Asia. Amongst these are several species of the family Heterophyidae some of which have been reported as opportunistic infections in people, and another, Centrocestus formosanus (Nishigori, 1924), is an important gill parasite of fish. Tarebia granifera also serves as intermediate host for the philopthalmid eyefluke Philopthalmus gralli Mathis & Ledger, 1910 which has recently (2005) been reported affecting ostriches Struthio camelus on farms in Zimbabwe. The snail host implicated in this outbreak was Melanoides tuberculata but the rapid spread and high population densities achieved by Tarebia granifera, which appears to be replacing Melanoides tuberculata in South Africa, may exacerbate the problem in the future.
For many years Tarebia granifera was believed to be an intermediate host for the Asian lungfluke Paragonimus westermani (Kerbert, 1878), but Michelson showed in 1992 that this was erroneous.
Read more about this topic: Tarebia Granifera, Ecology
Famous quotes containing the word parasites:
“Shy and proud men ... are more liable than any others to fall into the hands of parasites and creatures of low character. For in the intimacies which are formed by shy men, they do not choose, but are chosen.”
—Sir Henry Taylor (1800–1886)