What are Obligate Parasites?
An obligate parasite is a parasite that must be with its host, or it dies. Obligate parasites depend on the presence of a host to complete their life cycle. Obligate parasites are common. There are parasitic plants, fungi, bacteria, and animals. The inverse of an obligate parasite is a facultative parasite, a parasite that can complete its life cycle independent of a host. One of the most standard obligate parasites are viruses. Viruses are bits of genetic material covered in a protein sheath, capable of hijacking the protein synthesis machinery of cells and using them to pump out copies of the virus. Because of their inability to reproduce independently, viruses have sometimes been excluded from the kingdom of life, although this definition of “life” may be inappropriate because there are a number of more complex obligate parasites. Defending themselves from viruses may have been one of the first evolutionary imperatives of bacteria and eukaryotes, and both have evolved a range of err
