News by Subject Biology

Two parasites, the love vine and the gall wasp, are both hosted by one species of oak tree, but on Aug. 20, 2018, in the journal Current Biology, researchers at Rice University describe a new interaction between them. Rather than thriving at the expense of the oak alone, the vine leaches nutrients and moisture away from the wasp larvae developing in the tree.

Transmission of toxoplasmosis from mother to fetus can lead to severe congenital problems and fetal death, and tests for the parasitic infection during pregnancy are critical. Now, researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have showed the efficacy of a low-cost whole blood test for toxoplasmosis.

A study led by Indiana University suggests that computer models used to predict the spread of epidemics from climate change -- such as crop blights or disease outbreaks -- may not take into account an important factor in predicting their severity.

Over the last decade, it's become clearer than ever that bacteria in the human gut-- collectively termed the microbiome--play a key role in health and disease. Now, researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have shown that a subset of people with soil-transmitted helminth infections have changes to their microbiome when treated for the infection.

Bat flies have been studied in a variety of contexts, including host associations and specificity, how bat ecology and roosting biology affects parasitism, and how fly morphology functions to allow coexistence of species on bat individuals and populations. Laboulbeniales associated with bat flies have been recently rediscovered. Studies since 2015 have revealed many new hosts, host associations, and undescribed taxa. These trends hint at the true diversity of these unique fungi.