ABSTRACT Fluoroquinolones (FQs) and ciprofloxacin (Cp) are important antimicrobials that
pollute the environment in trace amounts. Although Cp has been recommended as …

Digestive-tract microbiota exert tremendous influence over host health. Host-symbiont model
systems are studied to investigate how symbioses are initiated and maintained, as well as to …

Abstract Leeches (Annelida: Hirudinea) possess powerful salivary anticoagulants and,
accordingly, are frequently employed in modern, authoritative medicine. Members of the …

The selection of an experimental animal model is of great importance in the study of
bacterial virulence factors. Here, a bath infection of zebrafish larvae is proposed as an …

An important question that remains unanswered is how the vertebrate neuroimmune system
can be both friend and foe to the damaged nervous tissue. Some of the difficulty in obtaining …

Giant viruses and amoebae are common in freshwater, where they can coexist with other
living multicellular organisms. We screened leeches from the species Hirudo medicinalis for …

Background: There are at least three distinct European leech species used medicinally:
Hirudo medicinalis, H. orientalis, and H. verbana. Infection caused by leech microbiota is the …

There are trillions of microbes found throughout the human body and they exceed the
number of eukaryotic cells by 10-fold. Metagenomic studies have revealed that the majority …

Non-blood-feeding leeches, Whitmania pigra, have evolved unique digestive structures and
physiological mechanisms to cope with fasting. However, the metabolic changes and …

Indirect methods for conducting faunal inventories present great promise, and genomic
inventories derived from environmental sources (eDNA) are improving. Invertebrate …