Parasitologist bestows squirmy honor on his distant cousin, President Obama
Karen Kaplan
How does a scientist honor a president who happens to be a distant relative? By naming a turtle parasite after him.
Baracktrema obamai isn’t just any parasite. It’s so distinctive that it represents not just a new species but an entirely new genus, according to a new report in the Journal of Parasitology. That hasn’t happened with this type of turtle parasite in 21 years, experts say.
B. obamai is a flatworm that infects black marsh turtles and southeast Asian box turtles in Malaysia. Scientists study turtle parasites because they are believed to be the ancestors of the flatworms that cause schistosomiasis, a disease that kills between 20,000 and 200,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization.
It might be hard for most people to warm up to an organism that can cause so much suffering, but parasitologists are different. These scientists admire the way that parasites are able to make a living in the most foreboding environments. B. obamai, for instance, is able to penetrate the circulatory system of a turtle host and deposit dozens of eggs in the small blood vessels inside turtle lungs, according to the study.
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