Selfish Gene (pg. 245-266)

During this last chapter of the book, Richard Dawkin's talks about parasites and how they live off other organisms. Throughout this chapter, we learn about a wide variety of parasites and how some may be 'useful' fo the host or they can cause serious damage. During his explanations, the author uses beetles as one example of an organism which carries parasites and he also explains how instead of damaging or causing harm to the animal, it actually does some good. "It turns out that 'cooperate' is putting it mildly. The service they perform for the beetles could hardly be more intimate. These beetle happen to be haplodiploid, like bees and ants. If an egg is fertilized by a male, it always develops as a female. An unfertilized egg develops into a male. Males, in other words, have no father. The eggs that give rise to them develop spontaneously, without being penetrated by a sperm. But, unlike the eggs of bees and ants, ambrosia beetle eggs do need to be penetrated by something. This is where the bacteria come in. They prick the unfertilized eggs into action, provoking them to develop into male beetles. These bacteria are, of course, just the kind of parasites that, I argued, should cease to be parasitic and become mutualistic, precisely because they are transmitted in the eggs of the host, toghether with the host's 'own' genes. Ultimately, their 'own0 bodies are likely to disappear merging into the 'host' body completely. (The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkin, Ch. 12, pg. 244)" Basically what we learn throughout this chapter is that some parasites, should not be given this name, because instead of harm they do some good to certain living organisms. This is why Dawkin's tries to -in a way- 'defend' some organisms from being called parasites.