Male-biased parasitism is commonly found in higher vertebrates and is most likely to be a result of higher mobility and lower immunocompetence of male hosts than female hosts. The latter would result in higher fitness of parasites exploiting males rather than females. To test this hypothesis, we investigated foraging and reproductive performance of fleas (Xenopsylla ramesis) parasitizing male a...

Malaria parasites (genus Plasmodium) infect all classes of terrestrial vertebrates and display host specificity in their infections. It is therefore assumed that malaria parasites coevolved intimately with their hosts. Here, we propose a novel scenario of malaria parasite-host coevolution. A phylogenetic tree constructed using the malaria parasite mitochondrial genome reveals that the extant pr...

Thottapalayam virus (TPMV) has been placed in the genus Hantavirus of the family Bunyaviridae by virtue of its morphologic features and overall genetic similarities to well-characterized rodentborne hantaviruses. This virus has been isolated from the Asian house shrew (Suncus murinus); however, whether TPMV is naturally harbored by an insectivore host or represents spillover from a rodent reser...

Abstract Background Rodent malaria parasites are important models for studying host-malaria parasite interactions such as host immune response, mechanisms of evasion killing, and vaccine development. One the rodent is Plasmodium yoelii , multiple P. strains or subspecies that cause different disease phenotypes have been widely employed in various studies. The genomes transcriptomes several anal...

Plague (caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis) is a zoonotic reemerging infectious disease with reservoirs in rodent populations worldwide. Using one-half of a century of unique data (1949-1995) from Kazakhstan on plague dynamics, including data on the main rodent host reservoir (great gerbil), main vector (flea), human cases, and external (climate) conditions, we analyze the full ecoepidemio...

B. burgdorferi, the pathogen of Lyme borreliosis, persists in a natural tick-rodent transmission cycle. Assessment of in vivo and in vitro microbial transcriptome encoding selected membrane proteins by high throughput qRT-PCR, showed bba62, bba52, bb0323, bba74, bbe31, bbg01 are predominantly expressed during vector-specific phase of B. burgdorferi life cycle compared to mammalian host. In addi...

background: in this paper, paleoparasitological findings from rodent excrements ob-tained from chehrabad salt mine archeological site located in northwest of iran are demonstrated and discussed. methods : chehrabad salt mine archeological site located in northwest of iran, dated to the achaemenid (mid 1st mill. bce) and to sassanid (3rd cent. - 7th cent. ce) period, is a unique study area to in...