The phrase "a parasite of" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something that depends on another for survival or benefit, often in a negative or exploitative context.
Example: "The invasive species acts as a parasite of the local ecosystem, draining resources and harming native species."
Alternatives: "a leech on" or "a burden to".
Striking examples may be found among parasitic insects of the order Hymenoptera; Copidosoma truncatellum, a parasite of certain cutworms, lays a single egg in the body of the host worm from which may develop as many as 2,000 individuals.
(It is a parasite of bacteria, not humans).
In 1888, however, a parasite of the scale insect was imported from Australia — a small lady beetle called the vedalia.
Every day malaria, a parasite of the red blood cells transmitted by mosquitoes, kills more than 2,000 people.
Anthrax anale is a parasite of tiger beetle larvae, and the European A. trifasciata is a parasite of the wall bee.
Males of Sphaeronellopsis monothrix, a parasite of marine ostracods, are among the smallest copepods, attaining lengths of only 0.11 mm.
The current process for manufacturing it is a rather messy one involving ergot, a parasite of rye.It may, of course, be that LSD has no clinical uses.
This rickettsia is probably a parasite of wild field mice, and it is perhaps only when cities push out into the countryside that house mice catch the infection.
Goldman, who came to prominence as "Red Emma" in the United States, campaigned against religion, capitalism, the state, and marriage, which she condemned in "Marriage and Love" (1910) as an institution that "makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent".
The causative agent of scrub typhus, the bacterium R. tsutsugamushi, is primarily a parasite of certain mites, of which two closely related species, Leptotrombidium (Trombicula) akamushi and L. deliens, are the carriers of the disease.
The female eulophid wasp develops as a parasite of scale insects, while the male, developing as a hyperparasite, attacks parasites of the scale insects (often females of its own species).
