Energy Russ Abbott

define: parasite A system that lives on or in another system from which it obtains resources or services but for which it provides no resources or services. Life on earth is parasitic on the sun [for energy] and the earth [for other resources].

Dicrocoelium dendriticum * D. dendriticum spends its adult life inside the liver of its host. After mating, the eggs are excreted in the feces. The first intermediate host, the terrestrial snail (Cionella lubrica in the United States), eats the feces, and becomes infected by the larval parasites. … The snail tries to defend itself by walling the parasites off in cysts, which it then excretes and leaves behind in the grass. The second intermediate host, an ant (Formica fusca in the United States) swallows a cyst loaded with hundreds of juvenile lancet flukes. The parasites enter the gut and then drift through its body. Some move to a cluster of nerve cells where they take control of the ant's actions. Every evening the infested ant climbs to the top of a blade of grass until a grazing animal comes along and eats the grass—and the ant and the fluke. The fluke grows to adulthood and lives out its life inside the animal—where it reproduces, and the cycle continues. * Text and image from Wikipedia.org.

An analysis of the energy flows upon which it depends? Its energy (nutrition) is supplied by its hosts. It relies on multiple animals for transportation. ▫Snails eat it, build cysts for it and then excrete it. ▫Ants eat it and then climb blades of grass. ▫Grazing animals eat it. It lives in a world of abundant energy flows. ▫To analyze the energy flow upon which it depends requires analyzing the energy flows of its hosts.