Almost all insects suffer from some form of parasitic mite, but certain potter’s wasps have pockets on their bodies that seem to serve no purpose other than to carry around and protect the very mites that suck their blood.
When the wasp lays her eggs, the mites pour out of the “acarinaria” ( “acarinarium” = a place for keeping mites!) and enter the nest where they feed on the blood of her developing babies, but not enough to stunt or kill them.
It’s all worth it because there are tinier, parasitoid wasps that lay their eggs inside of young potter’s wasps, which obviously DOES kill them, but as soon as a parasitoid wasp breaks into the potter’s nest, the parasitic mites switch to an aggressive territorial mode and successfully drive off or kill the majority of invaders.
Here’s another one, this time a vertebrate! The great spotted cuckoo (Clamator glandarius) is one of those cuckoo species that doesn’t evict all its host’s chicks from the nest. In fact, it doesn’t mind sharing, but ultimately the cuckoo chick is bigger and beggier than its “siblings” and so gets the lion’s share of the meals. The overall health of its host’s chicks (usually corvids) suffers as a result.
So how does it help its host? Turns out that baby great spotted cuckoos fire a foul liquid from their cloacas as a defense against predators. In areas where predation is high, nests parasitized by cuckoos actually have a higher survival rate for everyone involved than unparasitized nests, thus making it better to have a parasite than not!
It’s a fine balancing act to be sure, since in the absence of predators it goes back to being detrimental to the hosts. But that’s another example of parasites helping their hosts.
I actually didn’t know this and I’m so glad to know that there is a changeling baby in nature that may murder a real baby but goes on to protect its adopted family by shitting at people
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