Surveillance of ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) and tick-borne pathogens in Eastern Central Alabama.

Similar to other states in the southeastern United States, human cases of tick-borne diseases in Alabama have risen steadily over the last 2 decades. Nevertheless, limited data have been published on ticks or tick-borne pathogen (TBP) distributions since the 1990s. To better understand the risk of tick and TBP exposure in eastern central Alabama, ticks were sampled repeatedly across 8 sites associated with recreational use during May and June of 2015 to characterize tick density and diversity.

CRISPR-Cas9 and Cas12a target site richness reflects genomic diversity in natural populations of Anopheles gambiae and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

Due to limitations in conventional disease vector control strategies including the rise of insecticide resistance in natural populations of mosquitoes, genetic control strategies using CRISPR gene drive systems have been under serious consideration. The identification of CRISPR target sites in mosquito populations is a key aspect for developing efficient genetic vector control strategies. While genome-wide Cas9 target sites have been explored in mosquitoes, a precise evaluation of target sites focused on coding sequence (CDS) is lacking.

LA CROSSE VIRUS VECTOR RESTING BEHAVIORS - FIELD STUDIES WITH PROKOPAK AND RESTING SHELTER COLLECTIONS PROVIDE LOW YIELD.

Resting adult mosquito collections provide opportunities to sample broad physiological conditions (e.g., blood-engorged, gravid, nectar-engorged, and/or parous) that yield important biological information necessary to understand vector and pathogen transmission ecology.

Microheterogeneity of Transmission Shapes Submicroscopic Malaria Carriage in Coastal Tanzania.

Background: Asymptomatic carriage of malaria parasites persists even as malaria transmission declines. Low-density infections are often submicroscopic, not detected with rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) or microscopy but detectable by polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Methods: To characterize submicroscopic Plasmodium falciparum carriage in an area of declining malaria transmission, asymptomatic persons >5 years of age in rural Bagamoyo District, Tanzania, were screened using RDT, microscopy, and PCR.

Noise pollution causes parental stress on marine invertebrates, the Giant scallop example.

In marine invertebrates, abiotic stresses on adults can act directly on gametes quality, which impacts phenotype and development success of the offspring. Human activities introduce noise pollution in the marine environment but still few studies on invertebrates have considered the impacts on adult or larval stages separately, and to our knowledge, never investigated the cross-generational effects of anthropogenic noise. This article explores parental effects of pile driving noise associated with the building phase of offshore wind turbines on a coastal invertebrate, Pecten maximus (L.