How to Use intermediate host in a Sentence

intermediate host

noun
Definition of intermediate hostnext
  • In the case of MERS, camels served as the intermediate host.
    — Katie Camero, WSJ, 6 Feb. 2020
  • 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
  • So far, though, there is no clear sign of an intermediate host.
    — Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2021
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • An intermediate host, such as an itinerant cat, might ferry the virus from humans to deer.
    — New York Times, 7 Feb. 2022
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • The Japanese may be infected by D. nihonkaiense* by eating uncooked or raw sushi or sashimi made of anodromous fish such as salmon that is used as an intermediate host by the worm.
    — Rebecca Kreston, Discover Magazine, 27 Sep. 2011
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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 report recommends a host of further studies, in particular, sampling for the virus in wildlife and in farmed animals to find a possible intermediate host.
    — Kai Kupferschmidt, Science | AAAS, 30 Mar. 2021
  • The experts reiterated that their view is that the currently available data do not support giving the lab-leak theory the same weight as the theory that the virus emerged from an intermediate host.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 25 Aug. 2021
  • In late 2002, the coronavirus that causes SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, jumped from bats to people through an intermediate host, a weasel-like creature called a civet.
    — Alex Orlando, Discover Magazine, 5 May 2022
  • But there were no bats being sold at the animal market in Wuhan, China, where the current outbreak is thought to have begun, suggesting an intermediate host species was likely involved.
    — Simon Makin, Scientific American, 5 Feb. 2020
  • Although the sequences showed that the animal could have been an intermediate host and that the market amplified the spread of the virus, the data did not show that people who interacted with those animals got sick through that exposure.
    — Jen Christensen, CNN, 6 Apr. 2023
  • 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
  • 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

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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