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Listening to forest soundscapes for zoonotic disease surveillance
The Borneo forest soundscapes hold valuable information Photo credit: Denis Luyten “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” You might be familiar with this philosophical thought experiment – and bioacoustics might just be the thing that lets us listen not only for…
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Spreading like wildfire? Parasites in a pyrophilic world
Background Wildfire regulates ecological processes and systems by forming vegetation gaps, enriching the soil and other nutrient cycles, and creating new ecological niches. Of course, fire has been critical for the advancement of Homo sapiens too (hurray for cooked food and electricity), but we have also come to fear its destructive power. Our fear of…
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Mangy Mites Mess up the Mammalian Microbiome
Mites are small arthropods, closely related to spiders. While not all mites are parasitic, and many parasitize plants, some mites do cause problems for mammals. The most important of these are scabies mites, such Sarcoptes scabiei, belonging to the Sarcoptidae family. These mites crawl on and within the skin of mammals, and create burrows to…
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Data in a snap: Size, age and condition of elephants can be pulled out of photographs
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