The relationship between species richness and the prevalence of vector-borne disease has been widely studied with a range of outcomes. Increasing the number of host species for a pathogen may decrease infection prevalence (dilution effect), increase it (amplification), or have no effect. We derive a general model, and a specific implementation, which show that when the number of vector feeding ...

Enteroaggregative Escherichia coli (EAEC) are quite heterogeneous category of an emerging enteric pathogen associated with cases of acute or persistent diarrhea worldwide in children and adults, and over the past decade has received increasing attention as a cause of watery diarrhea, which is often persistent. EAEC infection is an important cause of diarrhea in outbreak and non-outbreak setting...

Ticks are important vectors of numerous pathogens causing illness, fatalities, and economic loss worldwide. Infectious disease episodes are increasing, and novel tick-borne pathogens are described frequently. Identification of novel reservoir hosts and vectors of tick-borne pathogens is essential if control measures are to be successful. In South Africa, the eastern rock sengi, Elephantulus myu...

Ixodes scapularis ticks are implicated in transmission of Anaplasma phagocytophilum, Borrelia burgdorferi, Borrelia miyamotoi, Babesia microti, and Powassan virus. We describe the establishment and implementation of the first multiplex real-time PCR assay with the capability to simultaneously detect and differentiate all five pathogens in a single reaction. The application of this assay for ana...

Molecular methods have increased the number of known microorganisms associated with ticks significantly. Some of these newly identified microorganisms are readily linked to human disease while others are yet unknown to cause human disease. The face of tick-borne disease discovery has changed with more diseases now being discovered in a "reversed way," detecting disease cases only years after th...

Ticks transmit a wide range of viral, bacterial and protozoan pathogens, many of which can establish persistent infections of lifelong duration in the vector tick and in some cases are transmitted transovarially to the next generation. In addition many ixodid and argasid tick cell lines and, by inference the parent ticks from which they were derived, harbor endogenous viruses (ETV) of which alm...