During colony growth, leaf-cutting ants enlarge their nests by excavating tunnels and chambers housing their fungus gardens and brood. Workers are expected to excavate new nest chambers at locations across the soil profile that offer suitable environmental conditions for brood and fungus rearing. It is an open question whether new chambers are excavated in advance, or will emerge around brood o...

White-nose syndrome is caused by the fungus Geomyces destructans and is responsible for the deaths of >1,000,000 bats since 2006. This disease and fungus had been restricted to the northeastern United States. We detected this fungus in a bat in France and assessed the implications of this finding.

Defense against biotic or abiotic stresses is one of the benefits of living in symbiosis. Leaf-cutting ants, which live in an obligate mutualism with a fungus, attenuate thermal and desiccation stress of their partner through behavioral responses, by choosing suitable places for fungus-rearing across the soil profile. The underground environment also presents hypoxic (low oxygen) and hypercapni...

Resistance of wood reacted in situ with phosphorus pentoxide-amine to the brown-rot fungus Gloeophyllum trabeum and white-rot fungus Trametes versicolor was examined. Wood reacted with either octyl, tribromo, or nitro derivatives were more resistant to both fungi. Threshold retention values of phosphoramide-reacted wood to white-rot fungus T. versicolor ranged from 2.9 to 13.3 mmol, while these...

Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin was tested under maximum challenge conditions with an estimated dose of 1.1 × 10 5 conidia/mm 2 for its effects on eggs of four of the major beetle pests of stored grain and grain products. When ambient relative humidity (RH) was 92%, hatch of fungus-treated Rhyzopertha dominica (Fabricius) eggs was 13% versus 58% for control eggs, and hatch of treated Tri...

Members of the Fusarium solani species complex are agents of human mycoses, also affecting plants and other animals. Nevertheless, this fungus has not been reported on scorpions. Ten specimens of Tityus stigmurus collected in the field and showing their surface covered by white mycelia were used to assess fungus presence in the animal after its death. Identification of the fungi was based upon ...

A Mariannaea fungus was isolated during investigation of an elm tree infested with unidentified beetles. Based on morphological characteristics and molecular analysis of the internal transcribed spacer rDNA sequence, the fungus was identified as Mariannaea elegans var. elegans. Fungal growth was better on malt extract agar than on potato dextrose agar and oatmeal agar. Optimal temperature and p...

The objective of this study was to demonstrate the correlation between endodontic treatment on maxillary teeth and fungus ball with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry measurement of zinc and other metals (barium, lead and copper) in fungus ball samples. Samples of normal maxillary mucosa were used as comparison. Metal concentration was also measured in several endodontic materials. A ...