In a paper published at Proceedings of the Royal Society coming from Anai’s dissertation, we report patterns of parasitism throughout the entire ranges of four coastal fish species. Weirdly, such work is super-rare. Consistent with our predictions, we found that the diversity of trophically transmitted parasites strongly increased towards the lower latitudes, indicating a particularly important role for such parasites and predation in those areas. See the paper at PRSB.
Our super-soldier paper is out
We report on the most physically extremely specialized trematode soldier yet found, which also appears to be obligately and permanently non-reproductive, in a new PNAS pub that came out of Dan Metz’s dissertation. See the paper at PNAS, our SIO press release, and this Science news article for more details.
Dan wins outstanding TA award!
Congratulations to Dan for winning a 2022-23 Scripps Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for his outstanding effort last year for our Parasitology lecture/lab class. He was instrumental for running and enhancing that class!
Anai defends her PhD dissertation!
Today, Anai successfully defended her PhD dissertation that involves great, novel work documenting patterns of parasitism throughout entire host-species ranges. Congratulations! Anai is aiming to keep working in the San Diego area, so we might be fortunate enough to keep seeing and working with her.
Dan defends his PhD dissertation!
Yesterday, Dan successfully defended his thesis, which breaks major new ground concerning colony structure and dynamics of trematode with soldiers. And, today, he’s off in his car to drive to University of Nebraska-Lincoln. There, he’s building on part of his thesis for a postdoc in Clay Cressler’s lab. Congratulations Dan! [Yes, he will be sorely missed!]