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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Ben Longdon @blongdon.bsky.social · May 1

Interesting looking set of talks on 'What turns spillovers into epidemics?' w @jessmetcalf.bsky.social @danielstreicker.bsky.social @aineotoole.bsky.social @peacockflu.bsky.social @HouriyahTegally - 19th May www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/events/what-...

Panel Discussion: 'What turns spillovers into epidemics?'

This talk brings together experts in pathogen genomics, virology, ecology, climate science, and data science to explore how AI, genomic surveillance, and…

www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

BTO | British Trust for Ornithology @btobirds.bsky.social · Apr 30

BTO's Hugh Hanmer, Senior Research Ecologist, is a speaker at this webinar where he'll be discussing the decline in Blackbirds in the UK and the spread of Usutu virus. Sign up to attend on the link below. ⬇️

BES - Parasites and Pathogens group @bes-parasitesgroup.bsky.social · Apr 29

📢🐦 Join us this June for our first free webinar!

"Diseases in Wild Birds: A One Health Perspective"

Where: online, free
When: 9th June 2025

Speakers, info & registration ⬇️
www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/dise...

@britishecologicalsociety.org @rspb.bsky.social @btobirds.bsky.social

Diseases in Wild Birds: A One Health Perspective - British Ecological Society

Join the Parasites and Pathogens SIG for this webinar covering the implications of the range of diseases present in the wild bird population.

www.britishecologicalsociety.org

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BES - Parasites and Pathogens group @bes-parasitesgroup.bsky.social · Apr 29

📢🐦 Join us this June for our first free webinar!

"Diseases in Wild Birds: A One Health Perspective"

Where: online, free
When: 9th June 2025

Speakers, info & registration ⬇️
www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/dise...

@britishecologicalsociety.org @rspb.bsky.social @btobirds.bsky.social

Diseases in Wild Birds: A One Health Perspective - British Ecological Society

Join the Parasites and Pathogens SIG for this webinar covering the implications of the range of diseases present in the wild bird population.

www.britishecologicalsociety.org

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Nature @nature.com · Apr 4

A many-limbed creature called the sunflower star has found a refuge to protect itself from a mysterious epidemic that has decimated its population

https://go.nature.com/43EIk4t

Revealed: where rare and giant starfish hide from an enigmatic killer

The sunflower star, which can be bigger than a hubcap, escapes a wasting disease by hunkering down in fjords.

go.nature.com

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Journal of Avian Biology @avianbiology.bsky.social · Apr 5

NEW PAPER: Bunting hosts recognize and reject parasitic eggs using achromatic contrast between markings and background. Both species show moderate rejection rates, highlighting egg pattern adaptation in cuckoo-host dynamics

➡️ vist.ly/3mz3qgh

#ornithology #EggParasitism

Fig. 1 from the article: Phenotype characteristics of eggs from two hosts photographed on the slate: (a) two eggs of the south rock bunting and one experimental parasitic egg (yellow-throated bunting); (b) two eggs of the yellow-throated bunting and one experimental parasitic egg (south rock bunting).

Fig. 4 from the article: Comparison of egg rejection rates between two bunting hosts against different experimental eggs. The results of the south rock bunting are illustrated in the left panel, and those of the yellow-throated bunting are on the right.

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Rita Grunberg @ritagrunberg.bsky.social · Mar 10

Excited to share our data paper on fungal diseases in tall fescue! Fun and useful experience having our data peer reviewed for usability and clarity. @fletcher-h.bsky.social @kokeeffe12.bsky.social @esajournals.bsky.social

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Disease epidemics and species interactions: A manipulation of seasonal establishment of fungal diseases in an old field

Many disease epidemics recur seasonally, and such seasonal epidemics can be shaped by species interactions among parasites, pathogens, or other microbes. Field experiments are a classic approach for ...

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Brian Stevenson Ph.D. spirochete lab @bstevensonlab.bsky.social · Mar 10

2025 International Conference on Lyme Borreliosis and Other Tick-Borne Diseases
Sept 7-10, Chicago

news.mayocliniclabs.com/2025-interna...

#MicroSky 🦠🧫🧪🧬🔬

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Dr Simon Goodman @phoca-sapiens.bsky.social · Mar 10

Lots of fun working with Tim Brown @parasitetim.bsky.social on this piece for The Conversation about our recent review on the under-appreciated topic of conserving parasites. If it sounds wierd, read this to find out why it's important for biodiversity 🧪🪱🌍 👇
theconversation.com/parasites-ar...

Parasites are ecological dark matter – and they need protecting

Save the pandas, sure, but what about the worms in their guts?

theconversation.com

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

PHAA One Health SIG @phaa-onehealth.bsky.social · Mar 12

#OneHealth Research Alert 📢Epidemiology of human contacts of equine #HendraVirus infection in northern New South Wales, Australia, 2006–2023 onehealth.ijidonline.org/article/S294...

Epidemiology of human contacts of equine Hendra virus infection in northern New South Wales, Australia, 2006–2023

Hendra virus is an important zoonotic pathogen in Australia, with widespread presence in flying fox reservoirs and serious health consequences for horses and humans. This study describes the epidemiol...

onehealth.ijidonline.org

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

rmonclus.bsky.social @rmonclus.bsky.social · Mar 12

Our paper about conspecific brood parasitism in the spotless starling is published in Biol. Lett. We showed that starlings can discriminate parasitic eggs, and that they use egg size as a cue to eject parasitic eggs. All the details in royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
#USPN #MNCN

A nest with 4 spotless starling eggs. One of the eggs is a 3D printed egg used in the size discrimination experiment. Hosts rejected eggs that were smaller than their own, and accepted larger eggs.

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

New Scientist @newscientist.com · Mar 12

Scientists have found DNA from plague bacteria in the skeleton of a 4000-year-old sheep, suggesting Bronze Age people may have caught the disease from their livestock.

Ancient ancestor of the plague discovered in Bronze Age sheep

The DNA of Yersinia pestis bacteria has been found in a Bronze Age sheep, offering a clue to how the plague may have spread through prehistoric farming communities

www.newscientist.com

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Tatiana Proboste @tatianaproboste.bsky.social · Mar 13

🧪🔬🐗 Our latest research on Feral pigs and social network analysis. We found that females have higher contact rates and males are a key connector between different groups.
#feralpigs #wildlife #UQ

Summer and sex raise feral pig disease risk

Research from UQ has found the sex of feral pigs and seasonal conditions are likely to intensify potential disease outbreaks in pig populations.

www.uq.edu.au

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Luís M. Silva @luismsilva.bsky.social · Mar 14

Great study by great people!
doi.org/10.1098/rsob...

Evolution of resistance and disease tolerance mechanisms to oral bacterial infection in Drosophila melanogaster | Open Biology

Pathogens exert strong selection on hosts that evolve and deploy different defensive strategies, namely minimizing pathogen exposure (avoidance), directly promoting pathogen elimination (resistance) and/or managing the deleterious effects of illness (...

doi.org

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Dr Jenny Dunn @jennycdunn.bsky.social · Mar 26

Delighted to share our new pre-proof "Do specialist haemoparasites induce tolerance in their hosts?" published in Parasitology. Really nice undergraduate project work by Cameron that we then followed up in more detail. Still more to be done!!

doi.org/10.1017/S003...

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Bennett Hardy @finderofrogs.bsky.social · Mar 19

Amidst *everything* going on, I'm still proud to see my 2nd chapter of my PhD out in full in the latest special issue of @animalecology.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1111/1365... (1/4)

Quantifying intraspecific variation in host resistance and tolerance to a lethal pathogen

Our study highlights the importance of considering intraspecific variation in host tolerance and resistance to pathogens. We apply a multistate model as a new way to quantify host tolerance and resis...

doi.org

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

British Ecological Society @britishecologicalsociety.org · Mar 8

Happy International Women's Day!

To celebrate, we've brought together a collection of blog posts from our amazing journal editors, showcasing their work as inspiring women in the ecological community.

#IWD2025
🌍🧪

https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/international-womens-day/

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Julia Baak, Ph.D. ❄️🦆🧪 @juliaellenbaak.bsky.social · Feb 26

JUST OUT in #Conservation #Physiology: Examining #AvianInfluenza #virus exposure in #seabirds of the northwest #Atlantic🦆🧪

We looked at #avian #influenza #antibodies in eggs of 11 #seabird species in eastern #Canada and western #Iceland to better understand exposure + risk!

doi.org/10.1093/conp...

Examining avian influenza virus exposure in seabirds of the northwest Atlantic in 2022 and 2023 via antibodies in eggs

Abstract. Seabirds are frequently infected by avian influenza virus (AIV), which prior to 2021 primarily consisted of low-pathogenic AIV with limited repor

doi.org

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Jaap de Roode @jaapderoode.bsky.social · Mar 4

Exciting to see this monarch butterfly on the cover of @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social this month. In this issue, Astrid Groot and I suggest that parasitism may contribute to the evolution of warning coloration by selecting for anti-parasitic toxins and pigments. Picture taken in St Marks Florida.🧪

Cover of journal showing monarch butterflies.

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

The Carlson Lab @ Yale @carlsonlab.bsky.social · Mar 5

Timely work on data integration for flu spillover prediction from @haileyrobertson.bsky.social and collaborators: "Understanding ecological systems using knowledge graphs: an application to highly pathogenic avian influenza" 🔓 academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

Figure 2. Visualizing a knowledge graph ontology. (a) Representing subject–predicate–object (SPO) triples in a graph format. (b) The current data
ecosystem; each dotted box represents a type of tabular dataset that may contain many of the individual SPO triples. (c) A domain-specific ontology to
represent an outbreak. Nodes (circles) represent instances of a class, with the bolded text above or below as labels with the node classes. To the left or
right of each node are the properties of that node. (d) The full ontology and schema for the zoonotic risk knowledge graph. The graph schema adheres to
the ontology.

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Sarah DuRant @durantlab.bsky.social · Mar 5

A high lipid diet leads to worse infectious disease outcomes. Interesting implications for wildlife food supplementation. Always exciting to have a new manuscript out! Congrats @ashley-love.bsky.social @sauerscientist.bsky.social
@jexpbiol.Bsky.social

journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

A high-lipid diet leads to greater pathology and lower tolerance during infection

Summary: Canaries fed a diet high in lipids show more severe disease outcomes than those fed a high-protein diet, with important implications for human and wildlife disease transmission.

journals.biologists.com

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

British Ecological Society @britishecologicalsociety.org · Feb 25

Each year we celebrate remarkable ecologists in our BES awards🏆

Categories cover the breadth of experiences and career stages, so let us know which ecologists inspire you!

Make your nominations by 7 April

https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/bes-prizes/

Recognising ecologists whose work has benefitted society and advanced our understanding of the natural world.

Do you know an inspiring ecologist worthy of our awards?

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Moreno Di Marco @m-dimarco.bsky.social · Feb 27

Check out a new blog about our recent paper on addressing observational biases in #zoonotic #risk prediction.

It's about wildlife, machine learning, and anticipating the next disease outbreak

A. Tonelli: wp.me/pzdYt-3Td

Original paper here
doi.org/10.1111/2041...

@methodsinecoevol.bsky.social

Addressing observational biases in data-driven approaches of zoonotic hazard prediction

Post provided by Andrea Tonelli Over the past five decades, more than half of emerging infectious diseases in humans originated from animals, with zoonotic pathogens posing a growing threat to glob…

wp.me

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Functional Ecology @funecology.bsky.social · Mar 3

📰Published📰

💮Heavy metal pollution enhances #pathogen resistance of an invasive #plant species over its native congener
fesummaries.wordpress.com/2025/02/18/h...

Heavy metal pollution enhances pathogen resistance of an invasive plant species over its native congener

Tiantian Lin, Abdul Manan, Shuya Yang, Guoqing Zhu, Yan Wang, Zhicong Dai, Klaas Vrieling, and Bo Li. This is a plain language summary of a Functional Ecology review article which can be found here…

fesummaries.wordpress.com

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Alice Risely @alice-risely.bsky.social · Feb 28

Of mites and microbes: I wrote a short research highlight on the findings of Alix Matthews and team, who investigated trophic interactions within the microscopic community living on bird feathers. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @animalecology.bsky.social

Feather mites selectively feed on specific bacteria and fungi on feathers with potential benefits to hosts

Invited Research Highlight: Matthews, A. E., Trevelline, B. K., Wijeratne, A. J., & Boves, T. J. (2024). Picky eaters: Selective microbial diet of avian ectosymbionts. Journal of Animal Ecology. Trop....

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by BES - Parasites and Pathogens group

Journal of Animal Ecology @animalecology.bsky.social · Mar 4

Our Blog Editor, Edie Abrahams (@edieabrahams.bsky.social), has provided a recap of the plenary talks she attended at the 2024 BES annual meeting. 🎙️
📝 you can read the full post here:

BES Annual Meeting 2024: A Recap of Plenary Talks

In December last year, hundreds of researchers from around the world gathered once again for the BES Annual Meeting, this time based in Liverpool. The conference was another great success for the S…

buff.ly

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