Crithidia

Crithidia
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
(unranked):	Excavata
Phylum:	Euglenozoa
Class:	Kinetoplastea
Order:	Trypanosomatida
Genus:	Crithidia

Crithidia are members of the trypanosome protozoa. They are parasites that exclusively parasitise arthropods, mainly insects. They pass from host to host as cysts in infective faeces and typically, the parasites develop in the digestive tracts of insects and interact with the intestinal epithelium using their flagellum. They display very low host-specificity and a single parasite can infect a large range of invertebrate hosts.^[1] At different points in its life-cycle, it passes through amastigote, promastigote, and epimastigote phases; the last is particularly characteristic, and similar stages in other trypanosomes are often called crithidial.

Crithidia bombi is perhaps the most well documented species and is a parasite of bumblebees. Other species include C. fasciculata, C. deanei, C. desouzai, C. oncopelti, C. guilhermei and C. luciliae. C. deanei is atypical of the Crithidia genus, and it has been argued not a member of the Crithidia at all. It is also not typical of trypanosomatids because of its unusual shape and it harbours endosymbiotic bacteria.^[2] Crithidia luciliae is the substrate for the antinuclear antibody test used to diagnose lupus and other autoimmune disorders

These parasites may be at least partially responsible for colony collapse in wild bee populations. (no citation provided. colony collapse refers to honey bees, not bumblebees) They cause the bees to lose their ability to distinguish between flowers that contain nectar and those that don't. They make many mistakes by visiting nectar scarce flowers and in so doing, slowly starve to death. Commercially bred bees are used in greenhouses, to pollinate, for example, tomatoes and these bees typically harbor this parasite, while wild bees do not. It is believed that the commercial bees transmitted the parasite to wild populations in some cases. They escape from the greenhouses through vents and a simple mesh could help prevent their escape.

Bibliography

1. ^ Boulanger et al. (2001). "Immune response of Drosophila melanogaster to infection of the flagellate parasite Crithidia spp.". Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 31 (2): 129–37. doi:10.1016/S0965-1748(00)00096-5. PMID 11164335. 
2. ^ Camargo et al. (1992). "Ribosomal DNA restriction analysis and synthetic oligonucleotide probing in the identification of genera of lower trypanosomatids". The Journal of Parasitology 78 (1): 40–8. PMID 1310733.