24/12/2015 Vera Unwin

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us at Bugbitten!

22/12/2015 Srimathy Sriskantharajah

This Christmas, many people around the world will put up a sprig of mistletoe to kiss under. It is an established festive tradition, but not many people realise that mistletoe is in fact a parasite. Furthermore, it is paradoxical among parasites because, whereas most parasites are abhorred by humans as the architects of disease, suffering and death, mistletoe has not suffered from this ‘stigma’. Here, I examine the secret to its successful image.

18/12/2015 Elsa Leger

In November, my team and I visited several villages in Senegal, collecting stool and urine samples from livestock, inspecting the blood vessels and offal of any slaughtered animal in the villages and surveying human and animal water-contact sites for specific aquatic snails. We were looking for schistosome parasites in order to determine the distribution and… Read more »

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11/12/2015 Hilary Hurd

The tapeworm Anomotaenia brevis not only changes the appearance and behaviour of the ants it infects but spreads its reach to the whole ant colony.

04/12/2015 Christina Faust

Mosquitoes are more likely to be infected with a second strain of malaria when they are already infected with malaria.