Eimeria was the last major group of apicomplexa to be fully analysed. A branch of the phylogenetic (evolutionary) tree, the apicomplexa radiate outwards into various categories, including two of eimeria’s more famous cousins: plasmodia, the parasites behind malaria, which kills hundreds of thousands of people every year; and Toxoplasma gondii, a mind-altering protist that infects felines, rodents and a variety of dead-end hosts (including humans).
Eimeria may not have quite the same qualities as plasmodia and toxoplasma, both of which are intriguing enough to have been featured in National Geographic, but it does have some qualities that make it interesting not just to the poultry industry, but to the scientific community at large – as a model organism for comparative work on apicomplexa in general.
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