Nutrient stress, concept

It has also been suggested that parasites may impair their host s nutrition by acting as a stress factor. This somewhat vague concept the writer understands to mean an additional burden that the host has to cope with somehow, and it costs him nutrients to do so. Just how it costs nutrients will one day be discovered for the moment it seems preferable to admit ignorance than to disguise it by using the already overworked word stress, which has a quite definite connotation in other contexts. 

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