An organism that provides food for a parasite. A host organism provides a parasite with food and somewhere to live. Most parasites are host-specific, which means they can use only certain hosts. However, a single parasite species may have two or more hosts, and these parasites usually alternate between one host and the other during their life-cycles. For example, the adult beef tapeworm lives in the large intestine of humans, but its larval stage develops in cattle, while the parasite Plasmodium, which casues malaria, alternates between humans and mosquitoes.
