We have a 5am start today as we have both our 96-trap grids open and it is going to be a long day @lydiabeckeriii.bsky.social @bethsallis.bsky.social @profjudiallen.bsky.social @amypedersen.bsky.social

Today two of our team left the island for a short break and Indra, Shaun and Tom arrived. We also celebrated Beth and Indra’s successful first year PhD vivas! @amypedersen.bsky.social @profjudiallen.bsky.social @lydiabeckeriii.bsky.social

An amazing Week 1 on the Isle of May — busy days, lots of mice, and much more to come! @kathelse.bsky.social @amypedersen.bsky.social

The “squeak-stake” is a bit of fun we have on the island - aim is to guess the number of mice we trap each day. We have 3 Manchester UG with us this season and Rachel who has never been here before guessed EXACTLY the right number on day 1 @amypedersen.bsky.social @lydiabeckeriii.bsky.social

First trapping day of the summer season 2025 has gone very well. Loggers are out too now so we can monitor how our mice are moving round the grid @amypedersen.bsky.social @grahammunology.bsky.social @lydiabeckeriii.bsky.social @macaulayturner.bsky.social

Lab is set up, food is stashed and first traps are out. @amypedersen.bsky.social @lydiabeckeriii.bsky.social @profjudiallen.bsky.social

We have headed out today for our 4th field season on the Isle of May - good to be back and looking forward to what the next 6 weeks brings @amypedersen.bsky.social @lydiabeckeriii.bsky.social @profjudiallen.bsky.social @sheencr.bsky.social

Day one has involved setting up the lab and re establishing our grids which have lain unused since December 2024 @lydiabeckeriii.bsky.social @profjudiallen.bsky.social @amypedersen.bsky.social

Interesting looking set of talks on 'What turns spillovers into epidemics?' w @jessmetcalf.bsky.social @danielstreicker.bsky.social @aineotoole.bsky.social @peacockflu.bsky.social @HouriyahTegally - 19th May www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/events/what-...

We compared gut microbiota across >800 lab and wild house mice. Wild mice have more diverse, aerotolerant, and dynamic microbiotas than their lab counterparts. See our latest paper here: bmcmicrobiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... #gutmicrobiome #musmusculus #wildmice

Hi #Drosophila folk: I'm advertising a 2-year #Postdoc, funded by a BBSRC grant on the genetic and immune determinants and evolutionary constraints underlying extreme pathogen transmission phenotypes. Deadline 29 April, details in the link below, or feel free to email: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMQ231/p...

Huge congratulations to EID member Amy Buck who has been elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh! Full news story ⤵️ edinburgh-infectious-diseases.ed.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Just a reminder that Cardiff University is proposing to cut 400 academic staff and drop nursing, ancient history, modern languages, music and religion altogether - all this while opening a new campus in Kazakhstan at the same time. Yep. Me neither. 🤯 www.rcn.org.uk/news-and-eve...

Rewilding catalyzes maturation of the humoral immune system | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/full/10....

I'm very pleased to have two lab positions open this week, to join our team looking at immune regulation in infection and co-infection. We're especially interested in tissue-based immunity, cytokine regulation and immune metabolism. Join us! Postdoc (3y) and research technician (12mo) posts open.

A high lipid diet leads to worse infectious disease outcomes. Interesting implications for wildlife food supplementation. Always exciting to have a new manuscript out! Congrats @ashley-love.bsky.social @sauerscientist.bsky.social @jexpbiol.Bsky.social journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Lab mice (domesticated for >100y) have kept gut bacterial strains that codiversified w/ rodents for >25My. Here, authors show genetic drift occured in the lab, leading to loss of microb diversity+more deleterious mutations, impacting microbial fitness in lab vs wt mice www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Exciting to see this monarch butterfly on the cover of @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social this month. In this issue, Astrid Groot and I suggest that parasitism may contribute to the evolution of warning coloration by selecting for anti-parasitic toxins and pigments. Picture taken in St Marks Florida.🧪

Bill banning mRNA vaccines in Iowa passes subcommittee iowacapitaldispatch.com/2025/03/03/b... It’s really getting hard to keep up with the stupidity Olympics in this country

🪰 Vector Borne Diseases workshop 🦟 Last month we hosted a successful workshop to bring together those who work on VBDs as well as highlighting the facilities at Edinburgh that underpin much of the research activity into VBDs. More info ➡️ edinburgh-infectious-diseases.ed.ac.uk/vector-borne...

DOGE moves to cancel NOAA leases on key weather buildings www.axios.com/2025/03/03/d...

NSF plans to reinstate all probationary employees who were fired on 18 Feb! NSF’s decision. 👏🏻👏🏻❤️

NPR did a thing. I helped out. www.npr.org/sections/sho...

In September in Geneva we applauded a major milestone in the effort to eradicate measles and rubella viruses from the face of the earth. Today an unvaccinated child has died of measles in the country where the vaccine was developed. This is not greatness.

Most of the fellows in CDC’s highly competitive Laboratory Leadership Service were fired last weekend. The ultracompetitive, 2-year program, which trains Ph.D. scientists in the intricacies of public health laboratory work. scim.ag/4gPy0te

Firings happening right now at the NSF.

Our review on nematode immunomodulation is just out in Current Opinions in Microbiology! Here we discuss recent findings on immunomodulators with enzymatic or binding activities - binding to host cytokines or receptors, or other immune-relevant molecules. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🌳 Researchers receive NERC grants pioneering environmental research 🐝 @reecelab.bsky.social @susanjohnston.bsky.social @sandyheth.bsky.social #AlexTwyford edinburgh-infectious-diseases.ed.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Now with an @evolletters.bsky.social blog post about the work from study lead Ryan Imrie evolutionletters.net/examining-pa... @uniexecec.bsky.social

Today we are at @edfuturesinstitute.bsky.social for our workshop on Vector Borne Diseases. With the aims to build links and ideas for funding bids, gain ideas on how to ensure sustainability of resources and identify strengths, gaps and opportunities!

Really interesting day discussing impacts of climate change on vector borne diseases workshop today. Lots of great science and discussion about exciting projects to take forwards. @keithrmatthews.bsky.social #reecelab @roslininstitute.bsky.social @amypedersen.bsky.social

Just out "Positive correlations in susceptibility to a diverse panel of viruses across Drosophilidae host species"; 35 host species * 11 viruses. Work led by Ryan Imrie together with Megan Wallace in @evolletters.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Sabotage. Criminal sabotage. "[The NSF] is planning to lay off between a quarter and a half of its staff in the next two months, a top National Science Foundation official said Tuesday." www.eenews.net/articles/sci...

RFK’s racist blathering harkens back to the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia where Black people—told we were immune—were asked to care for the perishing and neglected sick. 10% of free Black Philadelphians died.

One impact of the NSF freeze: They fund the small nonprofit, EarthScope, that manages seismic and GPS stations used worldwide to detect and warn of earthquakes and navigate autonomous vehicles. EarthScope can maybe make payroll this week. A prolonged freeze could see stations fail.

This is not business as usual. It’s not just a change in funding priorities going forward; it is the reneging on funding agreements and is profoundly disruptive for even those grants that will be found to be compliant. Meanwhile, trainees who often live paycheck to paycheck are going unpaid.

Happy to report that our work on immune system adaptations in bats is now out in @nature.com 🦇🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41... @ariadnamorales.bsky.social @batresearch.bsky.social @virology.bsky.social @DGKontopoulos.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy @sgn.one @bat1kgenomes.bsky.social Read more ...

Researchers from Biology have collaborated with 'Then Try This' to create 'Nergal' - a game to help understand how social networks and decision-making, change how diseases spread through communities Read more and play Nergal: edinburgh-infectious-diseases.ed.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

🌟 We've happy to announce that we've just released Nergal! 🌟 You play as a cute Nergal in your choice of fancy hat, pottering around a strange world. There's no right or wrong, you can do whatever you like. There is an ominous disease though […] [Original post on social.thentrythis.org]

Looks like a tremendous amount of work from Rodrigo Cogni's group, and a very useful quantitative review of the negative effects of viral infection across insect taxa. #symbiosky #virosky #InsectEcol #infection #evolsky

Final week to apply for this year’s round of the Princeton EEB Fellowship Program, folks! Please repost and help spread the word! We’re going tweetless and need the biggest bluest skies you folks can muster, please!!! ☀️ @eseb.bsky.social @asn-amnat.bsky.social @sse-evolution.bsky.social Thanks!

1. From morning EST to evening PST, I receive an email roughly once every three minutes. Overnight the pace slows, but not all that much. If I did nothing but read email and reply 12 hours a day I could probably keep up. A once-wonderful productivity technology is killing any hope of productivity.

Disappointing new study showing - once again - that women are leaving research careers at far higher levels than men If you're interested to read about strategies to reverse these types of curves, check out our recent #Cell perspective- link below ⤵️ #WomeninSTEM 👩‍🔬👩🏾‍🔬🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Absolutely astounding. Experimental horizontal transfer of #phage derived genes to #Drosophila confers innate immunity to #parasitoids. #symbiosky #microsky🧪

Re-upping before the holiday lull - please do contact if interested and share! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Do tissue-dwelling trypanosomes sustain transmission populations? A hot off-the-press @cellpress.bsky.social spotlight article by Steve Larcombe, Jane Munday @janemunday.bsky.social and @rmc9z.bsky.social -- www.cell.com/trends/paras...

Hey All, plz repost, and share with grads, post-docs and disease folks! We are hiring a post-doc to work on mechanisms of immune responses of frog hosts to Bd infections. Deadline is February 1, 2025. Details for the position can be found at the link below. 🐸🐸🐸 zamudiolab.org/2024/12/17/p...

Interested in immune responses to parasites? Mark Viney, James Hewitson and I have an exciting PhD project available : BBSRC NWD CASE: The role of co-infections in modulating anti-nematode immune responses Do get in touch if interested! urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

This is something that I'd always taken for granted, but it's nice to see someone put it down in words. I think that there is a lot more room for remote sensing and VBD models, especially around microclimates, vector behaviour and environmental variation. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....