Behavioral Ecology Blog

I just finished reading this paper from a recent issue of Science.. The Title: Disentangling Genetic Variation for Resistance and Tolerance to Infectious Diseases in Animals, which can be found (by subscribers) here. It’s a very nice paper, and brings up an interesting issue, one that I have not previously considered. Here it is… [...]

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Welcome to the 88th edition of the Tangled Bank, the best and longest running science blog-carnival out there. For the newbies, we blog about science, casting a wide net over the physical, social, and life sciences. Anybody is welcome to submit, so long as it is about science. This weeks posts come from as [...]

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Does anybody know if exposure to Sin Nombre Virus (the causative agent of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome here in North America) results in acquired immunity?
I know that there was a study of another hantavirus (Puumula Virus in Europe) which did show some retained immunity after exposure, but I don’t know about SNV.
Anybody know?

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So anybody that has NOT living inside a bubble for the last few days has heard about the planned Amphibian Ark. It has received extensive media/blog coverage, for example:
LA TimesNY TimesUSA TodayAP CoverageAt ScienceBlogs-Commonground
Anyway, you get the picture… A whole mess of Amphibians are bring killed by the emerging infectious disease chytridiomycosis, caused by [...]

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I’m always looking for examples of parasite infection modifying host behavior. Most interesting are cases where the modified behavior enhances parasite transmission. Of this type, there are several examples.

Ant-Fluke (Youtube video)

Meet Dicrocoelium, a fellow parasite.
This lancet fluke’s lifestyle is a migration through the fluids of three hosts; a cow, a snail and an [...]

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