Bernardo says "There hasn't been much evidence."īernardo has been examining host diet manipulation to determine if any empirical evidence can back up what has largely been just a hypothesis. But few researchers have studied host diet manipulation, and none have shown it conclusively. Diet manipulation could be reasonable because the parasite might need different types of nutrients than the host. Bernardo and her colleagues are interested in a more subtle, but equally complex type of host manipulation: how parasites and parasitoids influence feeding behavior and diet of their hosts. This nematode alters the ant's color and behavior, basically turning the ant into a berry so that the nematode can pass into its next host - a hungry bird.
"My favorite example is a nematode parasite that infects ants" says Melissa Bernardo, a PhD student at Wesleyan University who studies how parasites and parasitoids manipulate their hosts.
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