What you see here is actually one of the world's most active killers and its unwitting accomplice. To the right, you see a copepod, a tiny member of the zooplankton family (typically, no longer than 2 millimetres) that—despite its appearances—poses little danger to humans. On the left, you see a collection of dormant spores of the bacterium Vibrio cholera, commonly known simply as "cholera."
Scientists have long pondered the mechanism by which cholera would seemingly disappear from an environment only to sporadically pop up again. They have determined that if the conditions aren't right for V. Cholerae, it shrinks into a spore and stays mobile by hitching a ride on the copepod's back or colonizes in its intestines.
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