Dr. Dino Martins

speaker

168 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 14 Jul

Dr. Dino Martins’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Science Friday · Beautiful botflies, luscious leeches, and the wonder of parasites · 14 Jul 2026 podcast

Thank you so much, Flora.

Delighted to be here.

Absolutely.

So first of all, parasites are disgusting.

I accept that.

And they can be deadly as well.

But they are also part of the fabric of life.

And I think for me, as a naturalist, as a scientist, if we're going to learn about things that are beautiful and interesting, we also have to learn about things that are disgusting and maybe even slightly sort of disturbing.

Yeah.

You know, that's a really fantastic question because there isn't a single definition of parasites.

And if we think about a parasite being something that, you know, feeds on other things, but in what units is one of the things that biologists kind of debate.

And I remember E.O.

Wilson saying that, you know, he really liked precise definitions and his definition was,

was centered on the idea of a parasite being anything that fed on its prey in units of less than one.

So if you were a cow grazing on grass, you wouldn't be a parasite, even though you're feeding on something else.

But if you're a tick feeding on the cow, you are a parasite because you're feeding in units of less than one.

So it's, you know, like so many of these definitions in science, the closer you look,

the more complicated it becomes.

And it's very easy for us to define a parasitic relationship where a parasite is taking, deriving benefits, nutrients, whatever else it's grabbing, it's mooching off others.

And the host who is being targeted is paying a cost.

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