{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/vermin/parasitic-larva",
  "path": "/posts/vermin/parasitic-larva",
  "publishedAt": "2025-09-30T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "tags": [
    "ramble"
  ],
  "textContent": "When the eggs make contact with your skin, they hatch and burrow into\nyour flesh, like blowflies or lice.  While you sleep, they'll crawl\nout and migrate across your body in the fashion of bedbugs, seeking\nthe best hiding and feeding spots. Ideal for them is access to\nyour digestive system.\n\nAs they grow, each can split apart to multiply, each asexual\ngeneration enhancing the odds that a questing worm arrives at its goal\n--- as well as making the infestation that much harder to permanently\nroot out. \n\nStill, this presents the first major fork in this branching evolution.\n\nWhat happens if the larvae achieve their goal: migrating to the\ndigestive system?  Or better yet, the eggs were lucky enough to hatch\nthere in the first place --- perhaps because they'd laced the hosts\nfood?\n\nThey reached the intestines and grow fat there, unconstrained by the\nneed to move or hide.  Here there's much less work to do --- now it\ncan simply gorge itself on the hosts' food (a theft which encourges\nthe host to eat more and more) while it only grows longer and thicker.\nEventually, there are enough larvae crowding their guts to bulge the\nstomach.  But that doesn't mean the growth will stop.\n\nUnchecked, the larvae will continue replicating even after the host\nloses strength or ability or willingness to keep feeding.  Even after\nno more space remains in the gut, they can simply burst outward and\ninfest the rest of the internal organs.  As you might imagine, no host\nwill survive long with a chest so full of hungry spawn unleashed;\nmaggotslime drowns their lungs and their ribs burst while the heart is\ndevoured.\n\nThis is the the natural, ideal process of infestion --- the\nparasitoid lifecycle.\n\nA special note is to be made of alternatives to the gut.  It's the\nideal, but it's not the only place the maggots can take up residence.\nThe reproductive system can provide refuge --- mainly in cases where\nthe host has a womb.  Advanced manipulation of hormones may even\npersuade the body to direct nutrients to the passenger of its own\naccord.\n\nThis is not the only possible outcome of the maggots arriving in the\ndigestive system, but before explaining the alternative, it's\nillustrative to examine what happens if they cannot achieve this. \n\nSo next let's suppose they never make it to the intestines.  This\nmeans they must survive by subtly draining blood and fat deposits.\nWhat exactly happens next depends on the host's response.\n\nMost obviously, one may notice the bites, the growing weakness and\nfatigue, the inflammed sickness of an immune system expelling\ninvaders.  If one examines oneself carefully, one will notice the\nwounds, the blisters --- one might even catch a worm in the midst of\nits wriggle-scurry across an exposed stretch of skin, darting to the\ncover of a patch of hair.\n\nIf the host scratches at the wounds, squishing or tearing out the\nlarvae, and wipes themselves down, then one creates selection pressure\nfor larvae to adapt and hide themselves from notice.\n\nThus, energy will be diverted from just feeding on the host to\ncamouflage.  This already happens on a chemical level --- sucking up\ngenes and hormones to imitate the chemical signature of one's biology\nand hide from the immune system's notice --- and eventually it also\nhappens on a physiological level.\n\nAt an extreme, the worms will eat the host's muscles, biting into\ntheir attachment sites with teeth and tail-spikes, or cutting open\none's vessels and routing one's blood through themselves. Bit by bit,\none's flesh stops being one's own.  It still responds to one's nerve\nsignals --- for now, so long as that aligns with its own agenda.\n\nThis is the fusomorphic lifecycle.\n\nBut again, this is an adaptation --- it cannot happen if there's no\nneed for it to happen.  You may have seen photos of people with\nnecrotic wounds that have decayed to the point of having maggots\nvisible in their cavities.  And of course, those awareness campaigns\ntelling people to check for suspicious lumps wouldn't be necessary if\neveryone noticed these things.  It is entirely possible, given the\nright host in the wrong circumstances, for the infestation to develop\nto an advanced stage essentially untreated.\n\nThus, the maggots may gather themselves into a tumor-nest and extract\nnutrients with little if any pretense of mutualism.\n\nNow, easily this scenario mirrors one of the cases we'll discuss later\non, so what's essential for a unique outcome here is that eventually,\nthis affliction becomes taxing enough that either the host is forced\nto finally seek some treatment for it, or the host begins to outright\nfail in gathering sufficient nutrients for the parasite.\n\nImportantly, this all must happen before the larvae have finished\ngathering the resources needed for their pupal metamorphosis.\n\nAs a result, the parasite is finally forced to divert resources from\nextraction and growth toward reinvestment in the survival of its host.\nThis can mean synthesizing hormones like dopamine and adrenaline to\nmotivate behavior, and it can mean repairing atrophied muscles and\nnecrotic flesh with the same techniques of replacement-imitation\noutlined in the fusomorphic lifecycle.\n\nBut this outcome is a bit different.  What distinguishes this is that\nhere, the parasite isn't hiding, nor is it integrating into the hosts'\nbiology.  Rather, it is colonizing it.  The parasite has centralized\nitself into the tumor nest, and it only extends larva-tendrils into\nthe the limbs or hormone-signals into the bloodstream as something\nmore akin to puppetry.\n\nSo that's a decent enough name for this: the quasicolonial lifecycle.\n\nBut remember that first fork in the road?  We didn't finish exploring\nthe rest of it.\n\nSo, imagine the larvae had arrived in the digestive (or reproductive)\nsystems by migration.  This naturally implies that while some can live\nout the easy life in the guts, their sisters are still scraping by\noutside.  What are they doing?\n\nIn most cases, the intestinal larvae will pump covert hormonal\nmessages into the blood, coordinating the colonies elsewhere in the\nhost.  If there are larvae in the gut, these hormones will suppress\nthe formation of any rival 'tumor-nests' --- which are just pale\nimitation of the gut-palace, after all.\n\nThis means that remaining larvae will be directed toward fusomorphic\nbehavior.  This can easily transition toward quasicolonial or outright\nfusomorphic, especially if the environment demands parasitic\nadaptation to survive, or the host makes an effort to get rid of the\ninfestation. (But I repeat myself.)\n\nStill, unique behavior can emerge in cases where the host is\naccomodating and the environment fruitful.  This mean balancing on a\nknife's edge.  The parasite must grow integrated enough into the\nhosts' biology to discourage outright parasitoid consumption, yet not\nso intertwined as to advance to total assimilation.  It remains a\npampered guest --- free to leave at its whim.\n\nThis is the ovipositional lifecycle.\n\nThus defined, these are the four major modes, but the nature of a such\na flexible lifecycle is that possibilities still abound.\n\nA fifth mode, subtlest of all, can be most clearly outlined now that\nthe last three are defined.  Quasicolonialism implies a certain\ndominance of the nervous system; fusomorphism implies a total\nconversation of all limbs and organs; oviposition implies ultimate\nindependence from what the body provides.\n\nIf those absolutes are not achieved?  If the parasite is limited by\nthe host, if the transformation-conquest reaches a stalemate, if the\nlarvae grow too used to the shelter and indulgence of the body?  One\ncould almost imagine it the transplant of a new organ, a xenograft.\nThis is the endosymbiotic lifecycle.\n\nWe can continue: what happens if the host is lacking --- in biomass or\nin knowledge --- and the parasite would prefer a mulligan?  Larvae\nsimply infest flesh; should they be lucky, they can migrate to a new\nhost. Luck, or cunning: a host could be molded into vector replete\nwith larvae and manipulated into infesting others.\n\nBut if those victims remain in contact?  Fusomorphsis is, at its core,\nthe weaving of new anatomy --- what might result from larvae able to\nfreely slither and insinuate between many hosts?  (It's there in the\nname; fusomorphosis happens because the because the boundaries\nbetween organisms are so easily blurred.)\n\nBut we are getting ahead of ourselves.\n\nNow that we've enumerated the different modes, let us finally finally\nillustrate the most important difference between them all.  Recall how\nthe parasites have been repeatedly referred to as larvae --- one is\nleft to wonder, then, about the chrysalis and emergence.  Larva must\neventually spin themselves a cocooon.\n\nIn the parasitoid lifecycle, the coccoon engulfs the entire corpse (or\nagonized corpse-to-be).\n\nIn the fusomorphic lifecycle, the cocoon engulfs the host (or perhaps\nonly one colonized limb at a time).\n\nIn the quasicolonial lifecycle, the cocoon only engulfs the tumor-nest\n(an ideal time to remove it --- thus the cocoon often attaches near\nvital organs).\n\nIn the oviposition lifecycle, the coccoon strains against the guts or\nwomb, but is adapted for the host to lay it.\n\nIn short, the entiote is profoundly adaptive.  The host may be its\nprey to be savored from without, or a mere nest to occupy then\nabandon, or an assimilated extension of itself, or its fertile\nbreeding stock.",
  "title": "The Larval Entiote"
}