Characterizing the “landscape of immunity” across wildlife systems

How does animal susceptibility to pathogens vary across landscapes? In this shortlisted paper for the Sidnie Manton Award “Macroimmunology: The drivers and consequences of spatial patterns in wildlife immune defence“, Daniel Becker and colleagues discuss the expanding efforts to apply large-scale approaches to ecological immunology. Daniel is a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University and will be starting as an Assistant Professor at the University of … Continue reading Characterizing the “landscape of immunity” across wildlife systems

Self-medication: how to use macronutrients to better survive infections

This blog post is provided by Fleur Ponton, Senior Lecturer in Insect Biology at  Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Fleur and her team are investigating the relationship between nutrition, immunology and gut microbiota, primarily using flies as model species, this blog discusses her recent paper in the journal. Infection and nutrition are intimately linked. Nutrients in the diet play a fundamental role in sustaining an … Continue reading Self-medication: how to use macronutrients to better survive infections

How to make the most out of machine learning models and what can go wrong

In the latest issue of the journal we have a new ‘How to…’ paper lead by Nick Fountain‐Jones from the University of Tasmania on How to make more from exposure data? An integrated machine learning pipeline to predict pathogen exposure. In this blog, Nick goes beyond the paper and discusses 5 mistakes and things to look out for when not only running the pipeline presented in … Continue reading How to make the most out of machine learning models and what can go wrong

Video: Animal host–microbe interactions special feature open call – find out more

There is only one month to go before the open call for papers for the special feature on animal host-microbe interactions closes. In this video Executive Editor Ken Wilson chats about what types of papers he is looking for and why he believes this topic is going to be a growth area in the future.

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Animal host–microbe interactions Special Feature Open call – Only 2 months to go!

There armicrobal-large-web-ade only 2 months left to submit your paper to the Journal of Animal Ecology Special Feature on animal host–microbe interactions. Through this open call, launched by Executive Editor Ken Wilson in June, we aim to open up the process of publishing Special Features by inviting potential authors from emerging fields to contribute. We welcome papers that take differing, or even contrary, viewpoints as we hope to publish a broad spectrum of ideas on animal host–microbe interactions. The Journal has a long history of publishing papers on parasite and disease ecology, as far back as the first issue of the journal in 1932 with a paper by A.D. Middleton on “Syphilis as a disease of wild rabbits and hares” and most recently on the blog we have an excellent post by Associate Editor Andy Fenton on “The role of ecology in managing vector-borne diseases: Zika and beyond”. Continue reading “Animal host–microbe interactions Special Feature Open call – Only 2 months to go!”