Caenorhabditisis a metazoan host forLegionella

Engineering recombinant Orsay virus directly in the metazoan host Caenorhabditis elegans.

The recent identification of Orsay virus, the first virus that is capable of naturally infecting Caenorhabditis elegans, provides a unique opportunity to explore host-virus interaction studies in this invaluable model organism. A key feature of this system is the robust genetic tractability of the host, C. elegans, which would ideally be complemented by the ability to genetically manipulate Ors...

Metazoan-protozoan parasite co-infections and host body weight in St Kilda Soay sheep.

For hundreds of years, the unmanaged Soay sheep population on St Kilda has survived despite enduring presumably deleterious co-infections of helminth, protozoan and arthropod parasites and intermittent periods of starvation. Important parasite taxa in young Soay sheep are strongyles (Trichostrongylus axei, Trichostrongylus vitrinus and Teladorsagia circumcincta), coccidia (11 Eimeria species) a...

Ediacaran skeletal metazoan interpreted as a lophophorate

While many skeletal biomineralized genera are described from Ediacaran (635-541 million years ago, Ma) strata, none have been suggested to have an affinity above the Porifera-Cnidaria metazoan grade. Here, we reinterpret the widespread terminal Ediacaran (approx. 550-541 Ma) sessile goblet-shaped Namacalathus as a triploblastic eumetazoan. Namacalathus has a stalked cup with radially symmetrica...

Evolving “Metazoan” Development

A paradigm system for the evolution of multicellular animals is constructed. In many evolutionary models, the non-linearity of the genome-phenome mapping is ignored. However, the results of evolutionary paradigm systems that did include a non-trivial, complex genome-phenome mapping have suggested a framework joining seemingly conflicting evolutionary “points of view” like neutral evolution, Pun...

Basal Metazoan Sensory Evolution