News by Subject Biology

Scientists have discovered an extremely rare species of cymothoid from the mouth of a museum specimen of a deep-sea shark caught from the East China Sea, suggesting its wide distribution around the globe.

New research into how a common parasite infection alters human behaviour could help development of treatments for schizophrenia and other neurological disorders. T. gondii currently infects 2.5 billion people worldwide and causes the disease Toxoplasmosis.

Shoal behaviour in fish is an important strategy for them to safeguard their survival. Certain parasites are able to manipulate this strategy. Biologists have discovered that infected individual fish disturb the transmission of flight behaviour and, as a result, increase not only their own risk of being eaten, but also that of other - non-infected - members of the group.

A world-first study on the Great Barrier Reef shows crown-of-thorns starfish have the ability to find their own way home -- a behavior previously undocumented--but only if their neighborhood is stocked with their favorite food: corals. The starfish will consume available Acropora and ultimately eat themselves out of house and home before dispersing in search of new feeding grounds.

While associations between microbes and their hosts have long been known, little is known about how microbes evolve and how their evolution affects the health of their hosts. Now, researchers find that as microbes evolve and adapt to their unique hosts, they become less beneficial to hosts of other genotypes, suggesting that there is probably not one universally healthy microbiome and that transplanted microbes need time to adapt to a host before they bring benefits.