On 03/13/2014 11:59 AM, charles Linder wrote:
> Its an interesting idea, and its worth exploring, but the reality is most
> mice (and other creatures) do not ever develop a resistance to external
> parasites.  Almost every known creature is subject to one type of parasite
> or another. And breeding resistance to them is extremely rare from what I
> see.  It seems as fast as the host develops a bit, so does the parasite.
Actually species of parasites are extremely host specific.  That would 
indicate that species have been co-evolving together for millions of 
years.  They have been able to calculate back using some DNA test to 
when the crab louse became Pthirus pubis and exclusively began living 
not only on humans, but in their one particular niche on the human 
body.  Parasites don't just kill off species.

Why would a parasite waste all of the time to become host specific if 
the goal was to kill off the host?  Things on this earth want to keep on 
living.  If they didn't they wouldn't be here now.  There are parasites 
with complex multi-species jumping aspects of their many life cycles 
that require several different species to encounter different forms in a 
specific sequence.  I would love to know how many millions of years 
something like that took to come into existence and be sustainable?  And 
we think that bees and varroa are going to just magically co-evolve in 
30 years?

I don't believe there are any animals that live on this planet that 
don't suffer from at least some form of parasite.  Through it all some 
survive and some don't and the earth has an amazing variety of fauna all 
with parasites.

How did humans survive before we had drugs and sewage treatment plants?  
WITH PARASITES.  And we did it for millions of years.  This may not be 
quick-fix-able.  In some far future time there will be some subspecies 
of Varroa destructor that ONLY affects Apis mellifera.  I had better be 
considered in the naming since I called it.

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