“The parasite has somehow evolved to turn off the host's defenses, presumably by disarming the crab's immune response with some chemical trickery that fools the host into accepting the parasite as part of itself. …The adult parasite castrates the host, not by directly eating the gonadal tissue, but by some unknown mechanism probably involving penetration of the interna's roots around and into the crab's nervous system.”

—  Stephen Jay Gould , book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 367
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

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Stephen Jay Gould 274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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“In short, the root-head turns the crab into a Darwinian cipher, a feeding machine working entirely in the parasite's service. The castrated crab can make no contribution to its own evolutionary history; its "Darwinian fitness" has become flat zero. …But ever so carefully, for the parasite must maintain the crab in constant and perfect servitude - not draining the host enough to kill this golden goose, but not letting the crab do anything for its own Darwinian benefit.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 369
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

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Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

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“I'm a parasite inside a parasite inside of a host.”

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Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

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Did these people not know that if they continued to feed and spread and grow, with the tendrils of their greed wrapping themselves around their host, the day would come when it could no longer sustain them and when it died they would too?
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“Rupert did not understand why the parasites in cities did not understand the most fundamental tenet of nature - that a parasite eventually kills its host. Did these people not know that if they continued to feed and spread and grow, with the tendrils of their greed wrapping themselves around their host, the day would come when it could no longer sustain them and when it died they would too?”

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“He (Thomas Ray) had discovered that the notion of a host-parasite arms race is one of the most basic and unavoidable consequences of evolution.”

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“But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They're a lost cause, and I don't want anyone like that coming in here.”

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