![]() ![]() Taken together, these observations suggest that female crickets infected with hairworms may experience less mortality than previous anecdotal evidence suggests. However, we found that 50% of previously infected crickets produced eggs after releasing their worms. After releasing their worms, infected crickets survived for 73 ± 32 days but had significantly shorter life spans by an average of 13 days compared to sham-infected control crickets. We found that infected crickets grew significantly less during hairworm development compared to sham-infected control crickets. Using a different hairworm and host system, we conducted experimental infections to examine growth, survivorship, and egg production in virgin female Acheta domesticus infected with the hairworm, Paragordius varius. However, until now, only one study has examined survivorship of naturally infected hosts with hairworms. ![]() As parasitic juveniles, hairworms acquire nutrients from their definitive hosts, shifting resources away from host development to parasite growth. Hairworms are parasites of terrestrial arthropods that are free-living in aquatic systems as adults. The costs parasites impose on hosts can lead to reductions in survival and fecundity, but few studies have evaluated the impacts after infection. ![]()
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