Precipitation Drives Frugivory in a Subtropical Generalist Herbivore, the Gopher Tortoise, and Alters Its Functional Role as a Seed Disperser.

Consumers employ a variety of foraging strategies, and oftentimes the foraging strategy employed is related to resource availability. As consumers acquire resources, they may interact with their resource base in mutualistic or antagonistic ways-falling along a mutualism-antagonism continuum-with implications for ecological processes such as seed dispersal. However, patterns of resource use vary temporally, and textbook herbivores may switch foraging tactics to become more frugivorous in periods of greater fleshy fruit availability.

Panzootic chytrid fungus exploits diverse amphibian host environments through plastic infection strategies.

While some pathogens are limited to single species, others can colonize many hosts, likely contributing to the emergence of novel disease outbreaks. Despite this biodiversity threat, traits associated with host niche expansions are not well understood in multihost pathogens. Here, we aimed to uncover functional machinery driving multihost invasion by focusing on Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), a pathogen that infects the skin of hundreds of amphibians worldwide.

Right mainstem bronchoplasty 18 years following thoracic spinal implant surgery.

Thoracic spinal surgery has many complications ranging from surgical site infection, chronic pain, periarticular arthrosis, displacement of spinal screws and hardware migration to a lesser degree. Reports of spinal implants penetrating the aorta have been described in the literature, however to our knowledge, lower airway obstruction due to spinal hardware migration has not been reported. Here we describe a case of a patient presenting with a right main stem bronchial obstruction and pneumonia secondary to the migration of the surgical spinal hardware into the lower airway 18 years after his initial intervention.

Safety and efficacy of the C-Tb skin test to diagnose Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, compared with an interferon γ release assay and the tuberculin skin test: a phase 3, double-blind, randomised, controlled trial.

Background: Targeted screening and treatment of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection substantially reduces the risk of developing active tuberculosis. C-Tb (Statens Serum Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark) is a novel specific skin test based on ESAT-6 and CFP10 antigens. We investigated the safety and diagnostic potential of C-Tb compared with established tests in the contact-tracing setting.

Analysis of latent tuberculosis and mycobacterium avium infection data using mixture models.

Background: Estimation of the frequency of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) is difficult in areas with low tuberculosis infection rates and high exposure to non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), including BCG vaccination. The objective was to assess LTBI and M avium infection and to estimate their probability based on skin tests responses in an infant population from a region with the aforementioned characteristics.

Methods: A population-based tuberculin skin test (TST) and sensitin (M avium) survey was conducted on seven years old infants in Biscay, a province from The Basque Country (Spain).