Fig. 1.

Schistosome life cycle is amenable to genetic studies.

Male and female worms inhabit the vasculature where they mate and produce progeny (eggs) by sexual reproduction. Eggs are expelled in the feces where they reach fresh water to continue the life cycle. A miracidium of a single genotype is released and must find a suitable snail host where it penetrates and undergoes several rounds of asexual reproduction producing cercariae, the infective stage for a vertebrate host. The asexual proliferation in the snail host results in a clonal population of cercariae all of the same genotype. Adapted from Anderson et al. (2018).