The parasite that causes malignant malaria in humans is Plasmodium falciparum. The sporozoites of Plasmodium enter the human body, when a female Anopheles mosquito bites a healthy person.
Life cycle of Plasmodium in human:
1.When the mosquito bites a man, sporozoites present in the salivary glands of female Anopheles mosquito are injected into the blood of the man.
2.From the human blood,sporozoites enter the liver cells and grow in size to become a rounded schizont called cryptozoite. The latter divided to form cryptomerozoites.
3.The crypto-merozoite enters the human RBCs, and meta-cryptozoites are formed.The metacryptozoites divide to form meta-cryptomerozoites.
4.In RBC,meta-cryptomerozoite becomes a rounded disc like young trophozoite, which undergoes mitotic division to form multinucleate organisms, which give rise to merozoites.
5.Some erythrocytic merozoites enter fresh RBCs and form rounde gametocytes.When female anopheles mosquito sucks the blood of human,gametocytes enter the stomach of the mosquito.