Mastodon Feed
Boosted by jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)"):
nev@flipping.rocks ("neville park") wrote:
@wlmina @jonny you left out one of the most badass things about these parasites, which is that they take advantage of female crab behaviour (going to a high place and releasing fertilized eggs from her brood sac into the current) to disperse (except instead of crab eggs it's the parasites). If they get into a male crab, *they simply turn it female*: it develops a female body form and female behaviour, and if the parasite is removed it will regenerate ovaries instead of testes. AFBB (assigned female by barnacle), if you will. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacculina
Quite a lot of parasites require females to propagate (e. g. they can only fit into the eggs, not the sperm) and therefore have lots of *very* neat tricks for changing a population's sex ratio or changing their host's sex directly.
(edit: fixed typo)