How to Use intermediate host in a Sentence

intermediate host

noun
  • So far, though, there is no clear sign of an intermediate host.
    — Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2021
  • The eggs are passed in the animals' feces and can then spread to intermediate hosts.
    — Beth Mole, ArsTechnica, 13 Aug. 2025
  • An intermediate host, such as an itinerant cat, might ferry the virus from humans to deer.
    — New York Times, 7 Feb. 2022
  • Most of these viruses were transferred from bats to an intermediate host, like a palm civet or camel, before making their way to humans.
    — New York Times, 17 Jan. 2021
  • Birds serve as an intermediate host for West Nile, a pool from which the virus spreads among mosquitos who feed on the birds.
    — Jeff McMahon, Forbes, 31 Dec. 2022
  • In the case of this virus, the civet cat was an unwitting intermediate host of a viral spillover from bats that made the transition to humans.
    — Rebecca Kreston, Discover Magazine, 18 Mar. 2011
  • But the civets proved to be intermediate hosts, and its natural host was later identified as horseshoe bats.
    — David Quammen, New York Times, 25 July 2023
  • There has been plenty of speculation that the intermediate host could be pangolins, but that is not confirmed.
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 5 Apr. 2020
  • These eggs are then thought to be consumed by small, ubiquitous aquatic crustaceans known as copepods, the worm’s first intermediate host.
    — Rebecca Kreston, Discover Magazine, 25 Oct. 2015
  • In a spillover scenario, the virus could have leap-frogged to humans from its reservoir in bats via raccoon dogs, which would be considered an intermediate host.
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 17 Mar. 2023
  • Researchers theorize that the strain evolved and jumped to an intermediate host animal, and then evolved again to infect humans.
    — National Geographic, 24 Apr. 2020
  • Because the virus has a few genes that aren’t quite batty, researchers think the virus also spent time in an intermediate host before jumping to humans.
    — Anna Funk, Discover Magazine, 6 Dec. 2020
  • But this virus could have used what is known as an intermediate host — an animal species that becomes infected with a bat virus that then transmits it to people.
    — Helen Branswell, STAT, 9 Jan. 2020
  • Their report concluded the most likely scenario was that the coronavirus moved from bats to an intermediate host and then to humans.
    — Kai Kupferschmidt, Science | AAAS, 25 Aug. 2021
  • That animal probably transmitted the virus to an intermediate host, like a mink, pangolin, civet or racoon dog, which then passed the virus to a human.
    — Theresa MacHemer, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 Apr. 2021
  • The viral genomes found in early patients are so similar as to suggest strongly that the virus jumped from its intermediate host to people only once.
    — The Economist, 2 May 2020
  • Bats and people don’t come into direct contact very often, however, so an intermediate host is still quite likely.
    — Marilyn J. Roossinck, The Conversation, 7 June 2021
  • The parasites enter the intermediate host’s brain and muscle tissue and change its behavior in a way that boosts its chances of getting eaten by a cat.
    — Kate Golembiewski, CNN, 30 Nov. 2022
  • But their complex lifecycle involves spending time in an intermediate host like a snail before making a home inside a rodent.
    — Christie Wilcox, Discover Magazine, 30 July 2018
  • Liang said while the origins of the virus were still being studied, research suggested that bats may have been one of the hosts and that pangolins, a type of anteater, may have been an intermediate host.
    — Author: Kim Tong-Hyung, Matt Sedensky, Anchorage Daily News, 24 Feb. 2020
  • The hosting rat eventually poops out the young parasites, which then get gobbled up by feces-feasting snails and slugs (intermediate hosts).
    — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 30 May 2019
  • It also could have been transmitted first to an intermediate host like a civet, for instance, if the civet drank water contaminated with bat feces.
    — Michael Standaert and Eva Dou, Anchorage Daily News, 11 Oct. 2021
  • Animal studies can also help narrow down what that intermediate host might have been, which could give us an edge in preventing future coronavirus outbreaks.
    — Tim McDonnell, Quartz, 13 Apr. 2020
  • The pangolin was reported to be the most likely intermediate host from which humans contracted the novel coronavirus.
    — Uwagbale Edward-Ekpu, Quartz Africa, 13 Feb. 2020
  • And the prevailing scientific opinion is that there as an intermediate host, an animal of some sort, that was infected by a bat or bats and then infected people.
    — Maggie Fox, CNN, 17 Nov. 2021
  • Sometime in late 2019, the wrong virus left a bat and ended up, perhaps via an intermediate host, in a human—and another, and another.
    — Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 3 Aug. 2020
  • The parasite makes itself at home and continues to mature until such time as the parasite-and-hapless-copepod duo are devoured by the second intermediate host, a fish.
    — Rebecca Kreston, Discover Magazine, 25 Oct. 2015
  • The two viruses have a common ancestor that dates back thirty to fifty years, but the absence of a perfect match suggests that further mutation took place in other bat colonies, and then in an intermediate host.
    — Carolyn Kormann, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2020
  • Although its exact origin remains unknown, many experts believe the virus is likely to have originated in bats and jumped to humans from an intermediate host -- perhaps a pangolin.
    — Nectar Gan, CNN, 6 May 2020
  • Although genome sequencing suggests that the virus originated in horseshoe bats, it is now widely believed that the virus passed to humans through an unknown intermediate host animal.
    — Dave Hurteau, Field & Stream, 22 Mar. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'intermediate host.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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