Fiona's
Database

Comment

Abundant in air, soil and water.
Some are beneficial (e.g. those living in intestine and breaking down food) and some are harmless to humans. Bacteria which are harmful are known as pathogens.
Three main categories:
cocci (spherical), bacilli (rod-shaped) and spirochaetes or spirilla (spiral-shaped).
Bacteria can grow in an inert medium. Susceptible to antibiotics

Micro-organisms which are intermediate in size between viruses and bacteria;
like viruses they can only multiply by first invading the cells of another life form; otherwise more like bacteria and are susceptible to antibiotics.

Simple parasitic life forms which cause illness by direct poisoning, toxic by-products, allergic reactions and/or colonisation of body tissues.
Fungi can be divided into moulds which reproduce by sporing and yeasts which reproduce by budding.

Any organism living in or on any other living creature and deriving advantage from doing so, while causing disadvantage to the host.
Internal parasites are commonly acquired by eating contaminated meat, swallowing eggs on food, contaminating fingers with faecal material or through contact with infected water.
Scolex is the part of the tapeworm attached by suckers and hooks to gut wall of host; sometimes called head. Proglottides are the segment-like units of the tapeworm body which, when mature, leave the gut of the primary host in the faeces;
they are budded off from the scolex.

The life stages of the roundworm: egg → larva → adult
The life stages of the tapeworm: egg → larva → encased by body in a cyst → adult
The life stages of the fluke: egg → miracidia → redia → cercaria → metacercaria → adult

The simplest, most primitive type of animal, consisting of a single cell.
Resistant to antibiotics.

A type of parasitic micro-organism.
They resemble bacteria but are only able to replicate by invading the cells of another life form;
rickettsiae are parasites of ticks, lice, etc.
These animals can transmit the rickettsiae to humans via their bite or contaminated faeces.