Parasite Ecology

The official title of this course was "Animal Diseases and Parasites". I have written about both topics, but I am not a veterinarian nor a parasitologist, so I changed the title and the focus, excluding other causes of disease and making it about the ecology of parasites.

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The course included time for "labs", but not with the time or funding  to develop a lab component. The lab time ended up being mostly a tutorial, discussions based on some videos, and necropsies of specimens donated by students. I also included a paper, which was structures as a mock peer review of an already published paper.

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The guy in background is Francesco Redi  (1626-1697), the so-called "father of parasitology".  He is best known for that rotting meat in an open vs. gauze-covered jar experiment that refuted spontaneous generation 191 years before Pasteur. He also described over 150 parasites, worked as a physician, and was also a poet. He was able to accomplish all hat because he did not have to a smartphone to distract him day and night every 30 seconds.  He conceptualized and performed the first controlled experiments in history and hence, he is also known as the "founder of experimental biology". The larval stage of digenetic trematodes was named a "redia" in his honour. No, that is not his real hair.