animal disease
A simple way to preserve fungal cultures
In this post, PhD student Anuar Morales Rodriguez shares a cheap and easy method for maintaining collections of fungal cultures. If you don’t have access to a vat of liquid nitrogen or a lyophilizer, this method (first developed in Brazil at CIAT) allows you to store your favorite fungi over the long term as dried cultures on filter paper.
Riddled with ringworm?
Ringworm is a fungal infection of the skin–no worms are involved. That doesn’t make it a pleasant disease though. Here you can read up on the fungi that cause ringworm and a vaccine that can prevent it in animals. If you’re human, you’re on your own. We apologize if reading this post makes you itchy.
Furia ithacensis
Well now, everyone likes a dead fly, but I’m here to tell you that some dead flies are more spectacular than others. Like these gloriously dead snipe flies, exploded by a fungus that is named after my home town. If I were a birder, I’d call this find a “good bird,” and tick it off on my life list. Do you have a life list?
The Dancing Nematode and the Helicospore
Lots of small twisty things, entwined. Some of them are moving. What the heck is going on here?
The Insect-Fungus War: Behavioral Fever
Fungi, heat, and height all figure into an insect phenomenon called behavioral fever.
Pilobolus and the lungworm
Pilobolus is interesting enough all by itself, because it can shoot a big black bullet. We’d also like to introduce you to the lungworm. The lungworm takes an unusual route to get back into a cow. It travels through snot, dung, and–most surprisingly–by fungus.
Frogblog2: Origin and spread of the frog chytrid
Part deux of our two-part series on the frog chytrid, a fungus that is wiping out amphibians all over the world.
Frogblog1: Chytridiomycosis and global amphibian decline
Poor, poor froggies. Although we love fungi, we definitely do not love the chytrid fungus that is busy killing frogs and other amphibians all over the world. It is an evil and highly unusual fungus (not that some other fungi aren’t evil), in that it is the only known vertebrate pathogen among chytrids. Here is a primer in two parts.
A spider’s nightmare
I’m no fan of spiders, but I have to admire them when they are thoroughly dead and covered in fungus. Here are two fungusy spiders in glorious rotation. That’s right, I’m no fan of spiders, but I am definitely a fan of fungi.