Word: protozoa
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...soft-bodied, shun light, and always conceal themselves in the earth, wood, or any other of the more than 150 different objects (ranging from toy blocks to Egyptian mummies) in which they have been discovered. Termites are fond of wood because their digestive tracts harbor a specific kind of protozoa which enables them to digest cellulose...
...Police. For 250 years quinine was the only police agent used to control malaria. Swamp drainage and screening of buildings have been added to the force since 1898, when it was shown that malaria parasites (tiny protozoa of the genus Plasmodium) spend part of their life cycle in female Anopheles mosquitoes. The mosquito picks up the parasites from infected humans, nurtures them and injects them into fresh victims. The parasites run through the bloodstream of their victim, causing periodic fevers at the peak of their reproductive cycle; many lodge in the spleen, causing local pain...
...favorable for the growth of micro-organisms (and most places are) is a churning battleground of small, fierce creatures. A pinch of moist soil weighing one gram, for instance, may contain more bacteria (up to 2 billion) than there are people on earth. Among the ordinary creatures prowl savage protozoa engulfing them one by one. There is an underworld, too, made up of submicroscopic viruses, hardly more than big molecules, which often invade the larger organisms and multiply explosively...
...researchers noted that certain infections (e.g., the minute protozoa which cause sleeping sickness) thrive in a well-fed patient, but languish where some supposedly vital food factor is missing. Rats whose diet was lacking in the vitamin B complex survived sleeping sickness better than better-fed rodents. Ill-fed rats infested with an intestinal parasite were not helped by a pantothenic acid (vitamin) preparation in their diet; instead, the parasites flourished on it. So did the parasites in chickens infected with bird malaria...
...gasoline generator gave them light, and drying facilities for their laboratory and clothes. Investigating the riot of fungus, lichens, molds, smuts and mildews that festooned the place, Beebe discovered Protozoa, Coelenterata, Platyhelminthes, Nemathelminthes, and Rotifera, and was certain of the existence of Mollusca, Oligochaeta, Hirundinea and Arthropoda...