Just the latest example in what the “disease emergence hotspots” framework can’t prepare us for

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿@notjustdna.bsky.social · 2w ago

🦠 Newly discovered virus sickening cattle in Western Europe – transmitted by midges – closely related to a virus infecting cattle in Africa – not for the first time, likely to stay in Europe – diseases globalising Nice write-up by @kakape.bsky.social in Science: www.science.org/content/arti...

What's behind this tidal wave of epidemics? In the largest study ever conducted on emerging infectious diseases, we show that the popular explanation - "our relationship with nature is out of balance" - doesn't hold up. Out now in Nature, after half a decade of work: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The anthropogenic fingerprint on emerging infectious diseases - Nature

Emerging infectious disease outbreak risks are ubiquitous worldwide, and highest in landscapes where people, livestock and fragmented natural ecosystems coexist, but detection and data ...

nature.com

Where did bats come from?🦇🌍 After decades of debate, the biggest bat genome + fossil study ever done has an answer - and it’s not where anyone expected! 🤩OUR PHASE 1 FLAGSHIP is out today in nature! doi.org/10.1038/s415... A thread 🧵

Reference genomes and fossils revise bat family phylogeny and biogeography - Nature

An updated phylogeny of bats is presented, based on new genome assemblies and many ancient fossils and including all known bat families.

doi.org

Just out: Supplementary feeding of wild birds on farmland can be an important transmission risk for severe avian parasites such as Trichomonas gallinae, suggesting a rethink is needed on how this conservation practice is managed 🪱🧪🌍🐦 doi.org/10.1111/mec.... @molecology.bsky.social

Multiple Strains of <fi>Trichomonas gallinae</fi> are Widespread in Reservoir Hosts and Environmental Resources in <fc>UK</fc> Farmland

Understanding transmission routes of parasites and pathogens is critical for the development of control measures and mitigation of impacts on host populations. Trichomonas gallinae is a widespread pa...

doi.org

New bat species for Europe! doi.org/10.1016/j.ge... Many thanks to @piotr-naskrecki.bsky.social for the stunning photos of Nycteris thebaica, taken in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.

How viruses travel around planets. A map of showing the arrival of H5N1 2.3.4.4b influenza in Australia. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Find our new paper on amphibian and odonate decline in #Berlin. We first applied the #LivingPlanetIndex framework to a city area… check here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🚨 New today in Nature 🦟 After decades of debate, we show that climate change has probably made malaria worse in sub-Saharan Africa, causing about 1 extra case per 1,000 children. But: malaria eradication efforts have pulled the other direction 200 times harder. 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

One of my former student, Laura, who is an excellent young researcher, is currently looking for a PhD position in Europe. 👩‍🔬 She recently completed her Master’s in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Université Paris Cité, specializing in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

📄🦠Happy to share our latest paper, which highlights how non-invasive methods can advance parasite and disease ecology research.✨ www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=...

One of my former student, Laura, who is an excellent young researcher, is currently looking for a PhD position in Europe. 👩‍🔬 She recently completed her Master’s in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Université Paris Cité, specializing in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Mosquito-borne diseases are breaking records as climate change and other human influences allow the insects to expand their range go.nature.com/4x6xhMK

How mosquitoes are conquering the world — in four charts

Mosquito-borne diseases are breaking records as climate change and other human influences allow the insects to expand their range.

go.nature.com

Excited to share a new paper led by Marta Canuti, Joost Verhoeven & Judit Pénzes on novel #parvoviruses in #bats 🦇 of Eswatini 🇸🇿 We identified 28(!) new species including 1 infecting a 🦇 the rest were likely from insects 🪳they had eaten 😋 academic.oup.com/ve/advance-a... #Virus #viruses #parvovirus

Characterizing the parvovirome of Swazi bats: novel species, highly divergent lineages, endogenous viral elements, and taxonomic challenges

Abstract. Parvoviridae (small, non-enveloped ssDNA viruses) currently include 281 species in two vertebrate- and four invertebrate-infecting subfamilies. W

academic.oup.com

🦇 Bat rehabilitators that are part of the UK Bat Network say that cat attacks are one of the most common causes of bat casualties of the bats that come into their care. Here is a thread with some more information about how you can help bats and other wildlife around you if you have a cat.

Can digital epidemiology indicate the emergence and current distribution of canine dirofilariosis? bioRxivpreprint

Excited to share our new preprint! We show that Google Trends can indicate the emergence and distribution of canine heartworm disease (#Dirofilariaimmitis), closely matching mosquito infection rates. A promising digital epidemiology tool for surveillance of emerging vector-borne diseases. 🦟🐶📄

1/ Excited to share our new paper in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases: Discovery of a novel coltivirus in a newly identified bat bug species in Cambodia. journals.plos.org/plosntds/art...

Discovery of a novel coltivirus in a newly identified Bat Bug Species (Heteroptera: Cimicidae) in Cambodia

Author summary In this study, we identify a novel coltivirus, named Stricticimex coltivirus (SCCV), in a newly described bat bug species collected from cave-dwelling bats in Cambodia. Using metagenomi...

journals.plos.org

Great piece by @dbj63.bsky.social @cmyeaton.bsky.social in @thelancet.com on lessons learned during prior outbreaks fifty years ago and what do we still need to learn/ do www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Learning from swine influenza, Ebola virus disease, and Legionnaires' disease in 1976

50 years ago during a US election year marked by post-Vietnam war disillusionment, post-Watergate cynicism, and bicentennial optimism, three new infectious threats stress-tested the US public health s...

thelancet.com

Unwelcome guests: Nematodes of zoonotic and animal health importance in native and invasive carnivores of Hungary | EurekAlert! www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Unwelcome guests: Nematodes of zoonotic and animal health importance in native and invasive carnivores of Hungary

The spread of non-native carnivores such as raccoons (Procyon lotor) and raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) across Europe is becoming an increasing ecological and public health concern. Besides t...

eurekalert.org

Incredibly excited to see our work on Jamestown Canyon virus published in Current Biology!! I have grown with and loved this project for 3 years and couldn’t be prouder of the final paper 🩵🧬 Read it here to see how phylodynamics reveals JCV's complex life cycle! www.cell.com/current-biol...

New in @science.org ‼️ In the most comprehensive study to date, we show that wildlife trade is driving animal-to-human zoonotic spillover at a planetary scale, with +1 spillover per host every 10 years. Live animal markets and illegal trade pose even greater risks. 🔓 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Morphological and molecular characterisation of Cyclopodia bat flies (Diptera: Nycteribiidae) from Australian Pteropus hosts PubMed

Morphological and molecular characterisation of Cyclopodia bat flies (Diptera: Nycteribiidae) from Australian Pteropus hosts

No abstract

dlvr.it

We found that surface sealing reduces species richness and insectivorous birds, while taller buildings increase abundance and favor larger, higher-foraging and nesting species. Urban structure thus filters bird communities.

#Publication: With @lakatostom.bsky.social as first author, we published a paper in Basic and Applied Ecology entitled "Sealed surfaces limit bird diversity, whereas tall structures may support the abundance of some species, while both filter traits in urban landscapes". doi.org/10.1016/j.ba...

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

Variations in annual dengue intensities are explained by temperature anomalies Our new work led by Abbey Porzucek, @rafalpx.bsky.social, @colincarlson.bsky.social, Dan Weinberger to develop a method to compare relative dengue intensity between years and countries. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

NEW!🦠🌡️ : What makes a "dengue year" like 2023-24? It's hard to pin down an answer unless you can homogenize out all the spatial variation and temporal trends. But once you do, the answer is pretty clean: dengue years are hot years. Last one of the year (unless...?) 👉 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

BBC News - Drones detect deadly virus in Arctic whales' breath www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... (it is, in case you're wondering, cetacean morbillivirus)

Drones detect deadly virus in Arctic whales' breath

Whale breath collected by drones is giving clues to the health of wild humpbacks and other whales.

bbc.co.uk

An eel donated to a natural history museum in 1873 had two ticks embedded in its skin, making it the first known instance of ticks parasitizing a fish. But it was only first documented this year, when a tick specialist identified the ticks and reported the case in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

Ticks on an Eel: Museum Specimen is a First of its Kind

Two ticks found on an 1873 electric eel specimen mark the first recorded case of ticks parasitizing a fish—but only documented just this year.

entomologytoday.org

Check out this new paper put out by my collaborators and me! Led by Jose Maria Garcia-Carrasco and Javi Illan from WSU Entomology, we created models using tick, host, and environmental data to predict the distribution of different ticks and tick-borne diseases in North America. 🗺️🦌🦠🕷️ Check it out! 👇🏼

Bloodsucking Parasites@bloodsparasites.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Linking #tick and wildlife host distributions to map risk of #tick-borne diseases Parasites&Vectors