Word: larval
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Schistosoma parasites hatch in water, then have a complex life cycle: they enter the body of a snail, progress to a second larval form, then emerge and enter the human body either by mouth or through the skin. In man they cause a lifelong debilitating disease marked by coughs, rashes, blood in the urine, fever and nausea; eventually they attack the liver, lungs, spleen and brain...
...what will happen once the job is done? There is always some danger that an insect introduced to kill a pest may attack friendly insects or even humans. Berg does not believe that the marsh fly-either in its hungry larval stage or as a weak-winged grey or brown adult -poses any threat at all. Unlike the disease-spreading housefly, the sciomyzid avoids human company; its larva is hooked on snails to the exclusion of other food supplies. Says Berg: "Anything which is so highly specialized is not going to change its eating habits and start attacking babies...
...scientific voyeurism taught him little of practical value, and Dr. Fujinaga continued to spy on his prawns. After testing countless kinds of marine microorganisms, he found that during the first four days after hatching, larval kuruma prawns eat only microscopic Skeletonema costatum, a kind of diatom. When he learned how to grow his own Skeletonema in glass-covered tanks, his prawns survived their infancy. But Dr. Fujinaga could not manage to keep them alive longer than that...