Index >> Infection and Disease >> Vectors, Mechanical Vectors, Biological Vectors

Vectors, Mechanical Vectors, Biological Vectors

Arthropods are important means of indirect transmission. Living organisms that carry disease agents from one host to another are called vectors. Arthropods may serve as mechanical vector, if they carry agents of disease on legs and other body parts. The animal may serve as a biological vector.

In malaria, yellow fever.etc. the disease organisms infect the arthropod and accumulate these in salivary glands from which they are injected during next bite. In Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Lyme disease, microbes gather in the ticks gut and enter a wound when the tick feeds in human skin.