Complex immune responses and molecular reactions to pathogens and disease in a desert reptile ().

Immune function plays an important role in an animal's defense against infectious disease. In reptiles, immune responses may be complex and counterintuitive, and diagnostic tools used to identify infection, such as induced antibody responses are limited. Recent studies using gene transcription profiling in tortoises have proven useful in identifying immune responses to various intrinsic and extrinsic stressors.

Host contact and shedding patterns clarify variation in pathogen exposure and transmission in threatened tortoise Gopherus agassizii: implications for disease modelling and management.

Most directly transmitted infections require some form of close contact between infectious and susceptible hosts to spread. Often disease models assume contacts are equal and use mean field estimates of transmission probability for all interactions with infectious hosts. Such methods may inaccurately describe transmission when interactions differ substantially in their ability to cause infection.