Dicrocoelium dendriticum

The Lancet Fluke Controls Intermediate Host Behavior

© Rosemary Drisdelle

Eating Ants Transmits Dicrocoelium dendriticum, Photoman Digital, Thailand

Dicrocoelium dendriticum is a liver fluke of animals. It occasionally infects people, but scientists study it because it alters the behavior of its ant intermediate host.

Dicrocoelium dendriticum, the Lancet Fluke, typically lives in the bile ducts of the livers of grazing animals (and sometimes humans). It has a rather typical trematode (fluke) life cycle with three different hosts but, interestingly, it clearly alters the behavior of one of them, making it more likely to reach the next host. Though this type of behavior control is suspected in many other parasites, it’s often not easy to prove.

Dicrocoelium dendriticum Life Cycle

The animal in which the adult flukes live is called the definitive host—the host in which the parasite multiplies sexually:

Dicrocoelium dendriticum Infection in Humans

Dicrocoleium dendriticum infection (dicrocoeliiasis) in humans is quite unusual, and many suspected cases are simply the result of the person having eaten the liver of an infected animal—typical eggs from flukes in the liver travel through the intestine and are passed in the stool without actual infection. True cases of human infection with the Lancet Fluke arise when people—accidentally or deliberately—eat ants.

Other Parasites that Control Host Behavior:

Toxoplasma gondii and Behavior

Horsehair Snakes

Read Other Interesting Topics in Microbiology

Sources:

Parasites and the Behavior of Animals. Moore, Janice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Foundations of Parasitology 6th Ed. Roberts, Larry S. and John Janovy Jr. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000.


The copyright of the article Dicrocoelium dendriticum in Zoology is owned by Rosemary Drisdelle. Permission to republish Dicrocoelium dendriticum must be granted by the author in writing.


Eating Ants Transmits Dicrocoelium dendriticum, Photoman Digital, Thailand
       


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