Articles about 'parasite'

Research examining traces of parasites in the remains of medieval Cambridge residents suggests that local friars were almost twice as likely as ordinary working townspeople to have intestinal worms – despite monasteries of the period having far more sanitary facilities.  

Coprolites from the Must Farm archaeological excavation in East Anglia shows the prehistoric inhabitants were infected by parasitic worms that can be spread by eating raw fish, frogs and shellfish.

Earliest archaeological evidence of intestinal parasitic worms infecting the ancient inhabitants of Greece confirms descriptions found in writings associated with Hippocrates, the early physician and ‘father of Western medicine’.    

Professor Nick Davies, who gives this week’s Darwin Lecture, has been studying reed warblers for more than 30 years – and has unlocked many of the secrets of their interactions with the cuckoo. His work shines light on the evolutionary games played out in nature as species compete with environmental pressures, with other species, and with the opposite sex, to pass on their genes.

A study of reed warbler behaviour reveals for the first time that in assessing the risks posed by cuckoos the birds combine information from multiple sources. An ‘information highway’ provides one set of clues and personal encounters another. Only when both add up, do the birds take defensive action.

Latest research shows that schistosomiasis, a disease caused by flatworm parasites, may have been spread by earliest crop irrigation in ancient Mesopotamia, suggesting early technology exacerbated disease burden.

Using new ‘pattern recognition algorithm,’ latest research highlights how birds are ‘fighting back’ against the parasitic Common Cuckoo in what scientists describe as an evolutionary ‘arms race’. They found that birds with the most sophisticated and distinctive egg patterning are those most intensely targeted by the cuckoo’s egg mimicry.

Evolutionary trick allows cuckoos to mimic the plumage of birds of prey, and may be used to scare mothers from their nests so that cuckoos can lay their eggs. Mimicry in cuckoos may be more much more widespread than previously thought.

Screening method created to expedite the development of new drugs in the fight against tropical diseases such as malaria and African sleeping sickness.

The contents of crusader latrines are helping researchers probe the history of parasite infections in humans.