Awesome Picture: Florida Panthers in the Picayune

I was just emailed this picture of a mama panther and her cubs:

The email (from a reliable source) advises that the photo was recently taken during a fly-over of the Picayune Strand near Naples in South Florida.

Looks like three wild Florida panthers - cool!

Also pictured are what looks like a recently cleared road and stands of noxious Melaleuca – could be better! (As a matter of fact it is getting better - click here for info).

In addition to dealing with us ecosystem-altering and land-lusting apes, Florida panthers must also cope with other parasites – including highly specialized trematodes that have evolved a fancy for fare of the feline sort...

Trematodes are flukes of nature (sorry, couldn’t resist) in that they've evolved an astonishing, almost incomprehensible level of developmental plasticity. Most have evolved the ability to subtly manipulate their growth rates and sexual maturation to track the resources available in their environment. For parasitic nematodes, their environment is manifested by the internal chemistry of their victims. Id est, the digestive enzymes, hormones and antibodies expressed through the physiology of their hosts help the trematodes gauge the probability of reproductive success and to tune their own developmental process accordingly. This fantastic capacity for flexibility is of survival benefit because should a trematode happen to find itself immersed in the body of an unsuitable host, it can induce a state of arrested development and shift its metabolism to complete dormancy while awaiting transmission to a more favorable chemical climate. As a natural corollary, if the trematode succeeds in locating its target host (aka, its 'definitive host') it can quickly push development into overdrive and achieve reproductive adulthood in short order, thereby maximizing the opportunity to its individual advantage. Being unrestrained by the ticking-clock of reproductive efficacy, trematodes can migrate from host-to-host and even between species with relative ease. As a case study, consider the misadventures undertaken by the trematode species named Alaria marcianae.


Alaria marcianae is a fascinating organism known to target, as definitive hosts, the kittens of the Florida Panther (Puma concolor couguar). The Florida Panther holds a critically endangered status and, as the common name strongly suggests, resides in the state of Florida. The tawny colored Florida Panther is one variety of a widely recognized group of felids that are also known by the names cougar, mountain lion and puma. The panther-intersecting life cycle of Alaria marcianae is complex with several possible vectors of transmission, but in choosing an arbitrary starting point for the purpose of description, we can assume that its convoluted journey begins within the intestines of an adult panther.

Having recently been deposited in the intestinal tract of an adult feline, members of Alaria marcianae start their lifecycle as eggs. The eggs, unembryonated germ cells, intermix with the partially digested remnants of raccoons, armadillos and other common delicacies found in the panther's system, and are then excreted with the animal's feces. On being submerged in the inundated wetlands for which south Florida – and the Picayune Strand - is renowned, water stimulates the eggs to internally develop embryos. Once these embryos have achieved sufficient maturation, sunlight triggers the eggs to hatch free swimming, cilia-driven, paramecium-looking critters called miracidia.

The miracidia are not adult Alaria marcianae, rather they represent a sexually immature stage of development that is specialized for seeking out a very specific (obligate) intermediate host. To ultimately succeed in stalking a panther, the miracidia of Alaria marcianae must first locate and infect a ram's horn snail of the genus Helisoma.

On locating a ram's horn, the miracidium attaches itself to the soft exposed flesh of the snail, and by excreting tissue-degrading enzymes, it parts ways with its cilia-bearing outer layer. It then penetrates into the snail's body cavity. Shedding its ciliated epithelium, the miracidium becomes an immature sporocyst. Although sporocysts still lack the ability to reproduce sexually, by embedding in the snail's nutrient rich organs they acquire the power to produce additional replicates of themselves - clones called 'daughter sporocysts.'


Further advancing on the panther, the new daughters promptly leave their mother's side and venture to the snail's gonads. Mollusk hormones produced by the gonads fuel special cells within the daughters as they morph into tailed, tadpole-looking larval forms called cercariae. The cercariae swim to, and exit from, the snail's shell-producing mantle. From there, they return once again to the open water as free-swimmers.

Leaving the snail behind, the cercariae swim to the water's surface and hunt down the true tadpoles of the leopard frog (Rana pipiens) - their second intermediate host. Hijacking the leopard frog's tadpoles for transport, the cercariae drop their own tail and burrow into the tadpole's skin. There's no need for self-propulsion when riding inside a tadpole. Once inside the developing frog, Alaria marcianae, then at a stage where they're referred to as mesocercaria, cease further development and undergo another round of asexual cloning. As numbers continue to multiply, they patiently rest, waiting for the tadpoles to carry them landward as adult leopard frogs.

In time, the mesocercaria-bearing tadpoles grow into leopard frogs and move their parasitic cargo to land. On terra firma the leopard frogs are hunted by a wide range of predators; occasionally falling prey to yet another preferred host (aka, a 'paratenic host') of Alaria marcianae, the raccoon. After catching an infested frog, the raccoon's digestive enzymes make short work of the frog's flesh - in the process releasing the mesocercaria. As with its previous host, the mesocercaria multiply in the raccoon, but continue to maintain a state of arrested development - they are not yet adults.

Did I mention that raccoons in south Florida happen to be a favorite prey item of the endangered panther?

Utilizing methods similar to those during the frog-to-raccoon transmission, Alaria marcianae find their way into adult panthers by contaminating raccoons - panther prey. During the process of raccoon digestion, mesocercaria are liberated from tissue and enter the bloodstream by penetrating the intestinal wall.

Now, if the panther they find themselves parasitizing, by chance, turns out to be a lactating female, her hormones will stir the mesocercaria into migrating to her mammary glands where they will transmit (trans-mammary) to the digestive system of her kittens'. The term used to describe the situation in which a mother acts as a paratenic host to her own offspring is called 'amphiparatenesis.'

Here, amphiparatenesis results in the imbibing of mesocercaria-laden milk by the kittens. As with the mesocercaria residing within their mother, the parasites in the kittens will penetrate the intestinal wall and enter the blood stream. They'll surf the blood stream until reaching the lungs where they become metacercaria; as metacercaria they harden the surrounding lung tissue forming protective cysts. Having profitably acquired housing in their definitive host, the cysts in the lungs will eventually be coughed-up the trachea and then promptly swallowed into the esophagus. Once back in the intestines, Alaria marcianae accelerates its developmental process, achieves sexually reproductive adulthood (as sequential hermaphrodites), and deposits the next generation of eggs in the intestine.

Thus the cycle comes full circle.




Reference:
Foster, G., Kinsella, J., Sheppard, B., & Cunningham, M. (2009). Transmammary Infection of Free-Ranging Florida Panther Neonates by Alaria marcianae (Trematoda: Diplostomatidae) Journal of Parasitology, 95 (1), 238-239 DOI: 10.1645/GE-1749.1

The Ghost Plant, a Halloween Appropriate Post

During the Iron Age in Europe, tribes residing in what is the modern day British Isles celebrated the end of summer with a pagan-rooted festival called “Samhain,” which literally translates to “summer’s end” in the Goidelic language used between the 6th and 10th centuries. In conjunction with this festival the Celts believed that the realm of the dead overlapped with the world of the living, and that through divination long dead ancestors could help foretell events of the upcoming year. Samhain is one of many festivals that contributed to the ontogeny of what is now refereed to as Halloween, and like most of the other harvest celebrations it embraced the idea of spirits and ghosts intermingling with the material world. It is in homage to such celebrations of the spirit realm that this post is written; it briefly describes a fascinating plant that has evolved to take on a ghostly appearance and to occupy a unique niche in which it parasitizes parasites, introducing the “ghost plant”.

Due to its eerie appearance and non-typical angiosperm ecology, Monotropa uniflora has been dubbed both the “ghost plant” and the “corpse plan,” though it is also called – less spookily – the “Indian pipe” (undoubtedly because of its ‘uniflora’ which when combined with an elongate stem resembles a smoking pipe). A member of the Ericaceae Family, M. Uniflora is one of about 400 angiosperm species that exhibit an achlorophyllous physiology; they lack chlorophyll and consequently don’t undertake photosynthesis as an energetic process. The lack of chlorophyll is why the plant isn’t green in appearance; rather it displays a white-to-pink hue and exhibits translucence, thus causing it to look like a mushroom or fungus.

Although not a fungus, the ghost plant does take on some fungal-like habits, but before getting to those here are a couple of snapshots of Monotropa uniflora taken earlier this week to serve as a visual aid:




Because Monotropa uniflora doesn’t photosynthesize it doesn’t require sunlight to grow and can even grow in the dark. This ability grants the plant the opportunity to do very well on forests floors which underlay dense canopies that limit the quantity of light penetrating to the herbaceous stratum. The lack of photosynthetic ability means that ghost plant implores a different strategy to acquire and process energy, like many of the fungi that it superficially resembles the plant has adapted to be parasitic.

Not only is the corpse plant a parasite, but even further it is a parasite of parasites! Monotropa uniflora is a myco-heterotroph, this means that it has developed a symbiotic relationship with a fungus. More specifically, M. uniflora parasitizes the ectomycorrhizas (ECM) found on the roots of woody trees.

So, the roots of woody trees (pine, oak, etc…) are parasitized by ECMs, such as members of the Basidiomycota and Ascomycota families and, in turn, these fungi are parasitized by an angiosperm - the ghost plant! These symbiotic relationships can be highly specialized, and in the case of the species Monotropa uniflora Young (et. al.) found that the ghost plant parasitizes members the fungi family Russulaceae specifically.

As another visual aid, here is a photo from the above mentioned research article published in the journal Mycorrhiza showing a Monotropa cluster of hundreds of mycorrhizal root tips from which several achlorophyllous stems (*) are emerging (Reference below).

Because of its spooky appearance, its inclining to parasitism and its poorly illuminated habitat the ghost plant serves as a fascinating example of adaptation and as a fitting topic for a Samhain day blog post.


Young (2002). Monotropa uniflora: morphological and molecular assessment of mycorrhizae retrieved from sites in the Sub-Boreal Spruce biogeoclimatic zone in central British Columbia Mycorrhiza, 12 (2), 75-82