Evolutionary divergence of the swim bladder nematode Anguillicola crassus after colonization of a novel host, Anguilla anguilla.

Background: Anguillicola crassus, a swim bladder nematode naturally parasitizing the Japanese eel, was introduced about 30 years ago from East Asia into Europe where it colonized almost all populations of the European eel. We conducted a common garden experiment under a reciprocal transfer design infecting both European and Japanese eels with populations of A. crassus from Germany, Poland and Taiwan.

Quantifying differences in parasite numbers between samples of hosts.

An important question in many parasitological studies is the assessment of differences in parasite numbers between samples of hosts. This is not always an easy problem with which to deal. While almost everyone will agree that the main task consists in deciding whether the values in one sample tend to be higher than the values of another sample, there is considerable disagreement about what higher (or lower) should mean.

Visual and statistical comparison of metagenomes.

Background: Metagenomics is the study of the genomic content of an environmental sample of microbes. Advances in the through-put and cost-efficiency of sequencing technology is fueling a rapid increase in the number and size of metagenomic datasets being generated. Bioinformatics is faced with the problem of how to handle and analyze these datasets in an efficient and useful way.