Appendix 5: Quill Strokes, The Methinks On Parasites

(2.) Helminths are a parasitic worm-like organisms that survive by feeding on a living host, causing malnutrition, illness and sometimes chronic infections. These parasites remain a major health issue infecting over 1.5 billion people worldwide, particularly in developing areas causing conditions including anemia, nutrient malabsorption, and, in severe cases, cognitive or physical growth stunting.

Helminths are not a taxonomy animal group of a specific family, genus and species, but which are a polyphyletic assemblage of animals from different phyla, many of which are completely unrelated. However, for practical consideration, the term "Helminths" is used in this context to describe four phyla which superficial similariities:

a. Phyla Annelida ring or segmented worms

b. Phyla Nematoda, roundworms

c. Phyla Platyhelminthes flatworms

Cestoda tapeworms

d. Phyla Platyhelminthes flukes and blood flukes

Trematoda flukes

(3.) Phylum Arthropoda, Ectoparasites

Ectoparasites are those parasites that lives on the exterior surface of its host rather than inside of the host and often feeds on the blood and/or the skin of the host. Common types of ectoparasites are bedbugs, fleas, lice, mites and ticks.

a. bedbugs Order Hemiptera

Family Cimicidae of the Class Insecta is a small family of parasitic bugs that feed exclusively on the blood of warm-blooded animals, known as cimicids or loosely, bed bugs, and which family include over 100 species.

b. fleas Order Siphonaptera

The fleas are of the Class Inseta, Order Siphonaptera which have about 2,500 species.

c. lice Order Psocoptera which now includes the Infraorder Phthiraptera

Lice, are obligae ectoparasites (must live on a host to live) that are wingless insects which include booklice, head lice, bark lice and over 5,500 species divided into the Anoplura (sucking lice) and the Mallophage (chewing/biting lice).

d. mites Superorder Acariformes

Mites are in the same class with ticks and other Arachnids, but differ from ticks in that most mites belong to the superorder Acariformes, of which are described 32,000 species in 351 families. There is a possibility of as many as more than half a million species including all undescribed species.

e. ticks Superorder Parasitiformes 12,000 species

Ticks are in the same class with mites and other Arachnids, but differ from mites in that ticks belong to the superorder Parasitiformes, and distinguished from the Acariformes by the absence of actinochi=tin and trichobothria, both of which the mites possess. There are four orders with 12,000 species described with the possibility of as many as 200,000 species including all undescribed species.