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 · last 12 months

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

So parasitic relationships are very easy to kind of quantify in a mathematical sense or in this kind of scientific sense.

But when you actually look at nature, there's a lot of gray areas.

Absolutely.

Just like the microbiome, our perception of parasites is starting to shift.

Now, there's no question there are many parasites that cause a tremendous amount of suffering and have a huge impact.

But the question is, we have, as you said, evolved and co-evolved with parasites, as have many other creatures in the world.

And so could there be a benefit in one way or another to actually encountering parasites?

And the evidence is starting to gather and the answer is yes.

So just like the microbiome with all its complexity, exposure to parasites, perhaps when you're younger, for example, to certain parasites helps build and train your immune system to deal with more dangerous or deadly things it might encounter later on in life.

Parasites have all kinds of molecules and chemistry and weird genetics and extremely disturbing sex lives.

And all of these...

As long as we're here, yes.

So I describe how mosquitoes actually mate in the book.

I'm with my students and we see them mating and they mate in the missionary position, which is extremely entertaining for the students and not sort of what we would expect of mosquitoes.

You know, you'd think they'd be a little bit more kind of, you know, sort of, who knows?

I'm struggling to find the right word here, but...

But, you know, ticks are another amazing one and some species mate on the host, like on the dog.

And the male actually has to do like all this foreplay to get the female really sort of in the mood and excited.

And then this, you know, this might be too much for listeners or for sensitive nature, but he actually uses his mouth parts to do it.

And yes, I'll just leave it at that.

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