Florida's most unwanted guests are being dissected at Florida Gulf Coast University. Students are uncovering a host of problems hidden inside iguanas and pythons.
Stevenson Destrat, an FGCU student, shared his enthusiasm for the work.
"I like to cut it in segments sometimes as well, to really pull it apart," said Destrat.
For Destrat, who grew up in Lehigh Acres, this is just another day.
"One thing that I think is so special is just like being able to see a lot of the things just every day," said Destrat.
He recalled his childhood experiences in Lehigh Acres.
"You have a lot of backyard space, so you're always seeing these geckos, you're always seeing like natural snakes," said Destrat.
Now, Destrat is not just seeing them, he's dissecting them.
"Who else can say? Like, they've been in a lab dissecting animals for like, 16 weeks," said Destrat.
In the lab, a frozen python is ready to be unraveled and sliced open.
Dr. Christina Anaya, an assistant professor at FGCU, explained the significance of their findings.
"All animals on the planet have parasites. Most of them have one or two, but many of them have three, four or more different species living inside the respiratory and digestive tract," said Anaya.
The invasive species are full of parasites like tapeworms, trematodes, and lung worms.
"What we have found so far is cane toads have lung worms, not the same that are in the pythons, but a different species," said Anaya. "And we're just finding other species of lung worms in these animals. They also have tons of nematodes in their guts, several different trematodes, different kinds of parasites."
Dr. Anaya observed that parasites were often overlooked in ecological studies.
"For many years, ecologists actually ignored the parasites in these ecological studies and didn't consider them very important," said Anaya. "It turns out, they're really important, and they're so important we don't even really understand completely how, if we don't even know how many parasites are in the environment."
These parasites don't remain inside their hosts.
"When these non-natives come to a new area, it's kind of like a shotgun blast, and those little eggs are going everywhere," said Anaya. "That's how parasites get out into the environment to infect the next host in their life cycle."
Destrat expressed excitement when discovering parasites.
"It's very exciting, because we get to put them in these little tubes," said Destrat. "We're able to see what type of organisms it's eating and see like how it's affecting the native environment."
The work at FGCU continues to shed light on the ecological impact of invasive species and their parasites.