Bloodsuckers

Bloodsucking Animals: Blood-Feeding Strategies and the Importance of Saliva provides the first comprehensive overview of animals that feed on blood, ranging from blood flukes, ticks, mosquitoes, and vampire snails, to leeches, lampreys, oxpeckers, and vampire bats. It considers the important role of saliva in obtaining blood and how we might exploit the various blood-feeding strategies to design new drugs, vaccines, and biomaterials.

Written by international experts on the biodiversity of bloodsuckers, this book explores the evolution of hematophagy and how different sanguivores have evolved their own unique approach to obtaining a bloodmeal. It discusses the thousands of proteins and non-peptidic molecules in the saliva of bloodsuckers and their role in manipulating host countermeasures, such as pain, blood-clotting, and inflammation, which try to prevent blood loss. The latter part of the book considers how these bioactive molecules and the strategies used to apply them might be used in medical and veterinary science for the benefit of humankind.

Bloodsucking Animals: Blood-Feeding Strategies and the Importance of Saliva is an important resource for students, teachers, researchers, medical and veterinary practitioners.