Parasite, Protelean Parasite and Parasitoid
Parasite:
An animal species which lives in or on a large animal, the host, feeding upon it and frequently destroying. A parasite needs only one or part of one host to reach maturity.
Protelean parasite:
An insect species in which only their immature stages are parasite.
Parasitoid:
An insect parasite an arthropod, parasitic only in its immature stages, destroying its host in the process of its development and free living as an adult.
A parasitoid as a particular kind of Protelean parasite that attacks invertebrate hosts which are nearly always destroyed in the process of development.
1. A parasitoid restricted to attacks and destroys only arthropods, rather than invertebrate in general.
2. Parasitoids have been used more frequently than insect predators in classical biological insect pest suppression programme and probably in ratio from 2:1 to 4:1.
3. The parasitoids differ from true parasites in many ways.
4. The development of individual destroys its host.
5. The host is usually of the same taxonomic class.
a. In comparison with the hosts they are of relatively large size.
b. They are parasitic as larvae only, the adults being free living forms.
c. They do not exhibit heteroecism.
d. As a parameter in population dynamic their action resembles that of predators more than that of true parasites.