Bartonella are bacteria that cause endocarditis, a potentially life-threatening illness in humans and domestic animals. In Latin America, common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) are frequently infected by Bartonella, and their subsistence on blood creates a risk for bacterial transmission from bats to humans and livestock. A study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases by Daniel...
Feeding ants dopamine might make them smarter foragers
In an ant colony, few tasks are as important as gathering food. But the desert heat can pose a challenge for an ant on foraging duty. Recent findings, publishing in the journal iScience on September 27, show how dopamine may influence the behavior of ant foragers in the desert.
"If there's one thing you can say...
New bird flu viruses in ducks after vaccines largely prevented H7N9 in chickens
In response to bird flu pandemics starting in 2013, officials in China introduced a new vaccine for chickens in September 2017. Recent findings suggest that the vaccine largely worked but detected two new genetic variations of the H7N9 and H7N2 subtypes in unvaccinated ducks. These findings will be published in the journal Cell Host &...
Ancient past of a body plan code probed
Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have opened a window on another piece of evolutionary biology. They have found that Hox genes, which are key regulators of the way the bodies of bilaterally symmetrical animals form, also play a role in controlling the radially symmetric body plan of the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella...
Why a 'cuckoo in the nest' can go undetected
Researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Cambridge have shed light on why some species cannot tell the difference between their own offspring and those of intruders that have been slipped into their nests.
It has previously been observed that parents are often incapable of recognising genetic differences between their offspring and the offspring of another...
PCB pollution threatens to wipe out killer whales
More than forty years after the first initiatives were taken to ban the use of PCBs, the chemical pollutants remain a deadly threat to animals at the top of the food chain. A new study, just published in the journal Science, shows that the current concentrations of PCBs can lead to the disappearance of half...