BACKGROUND Species diversity is proposed to greatly impact the prevalence of pathogens. Two predominant hypotheses, the "Dilution Effect" and the "Amplification Effect", predict divergent outcomes with respect to the impact of species diversity. The Dilution Effect predicts that pathogen prevalence will be negatively correlated with increased species diversity, while the Amplification Effect pr...

Abstract Background As the largest group of mammalian species, which are also widely distributed all over world, rodents natural reservoirs for many diverse zoonotic viruses. A comprehensive understanding core virome should therefore assist in efforts to reduce risk future emergence or re-emergence rodent-borne pathogens. Results This study aimed describe viral range that could be detected lung...

b a ckground: zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (zcl) is endemic in many parts of iran. recently its incidence isconsiderable in different parts of jahrom district, in fars province, southern iran. the aims of our study were to in- vestigate the prevalence of leishmania infection, and identify and characterize the   leishmania species present, among the rodents by molecular methods in a new ende...

High species diversity of the potential animal host community for a zoonotic pathogen may reduce pathogen transmission among the most competent host, a phenomenon called the "dilution effect", but the mechanisms driving this effect have been little studied. One proposed mechanism is "encounter reduction" where host species of low-competency decrease contact rates between infected and susceptibl...

The behavioral manipulation hypothesis predicts that parasites can change host behavior in a way that benefits the parasites and not the host (extensively reviewed in [1–9]). In other words, the hypothesis predicts that genes of a parasite can produce an "extended" phenotype that manifests beyond a parasite's soma [10]. Protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii (henceforth toxoplasma) is an often-ci...

Most viruses in the genus Flavivirus are horizontally transmitted between hematophagous arthropods and vertebrate hosts, but some are maintained in arthropod- or vertebrate-restricted transmission cycles. Flaviviruses maintained by vertebrate-only transmission are commonly referred to as no known vector (NKV) flaviviruses. Fourteen species and two subtypes of NKV flaviviruses are recognized by ...

Current phylogenetic analysis of the flavivirus genus has identified a group mosquito-borne viruses for which vertebrate hosts are currently unknown. Here we report identification novel member this from peridomestic rodent species ( Sundamys muelleri ) collected in Sarawak, Malaysia 2016. We propose to name Batu Kawa virus after location it was identified, with abbreviation BKWV. Characterizati...