July 24, 2008
Parasites Permeate Ecosystems [60-Second Science]
Scientific American - Posted: July 24th, 2008, 7:42am EDT
[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
When you think about an ecosystem, you usually think of the big animals that live there. The Serengeti’s ruled by lions. And estuaries are populated by fishes, birds, snails and maybe the occasional otter. But there’s more to an ecosystem than meets the eye. Because a team of scientists from the US and Mexico has found that parasites constitute a sizeable chunk of the biomass of an ecosystem.
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