Coxiella burnetii in 3 Species of Turtles in the Upper Midwest, United States.

Coxiella burnetii, the causative bacterium of the zoonotic disease Q fever, has been documented in many different species. We describe documented turtles that were PCR positive for C. burnetii from multiple locations in Illinois and Wisconsin, USA.

Analysis of the Microbiota in the Fecal Material of Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta).

We used high-throughput sequencing analysis, which targeted the hypervariable V3-V4 region of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene, to investigate the microbiota in fecal material from ten wild painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) captured in southeastern Wisconsin. The most predominant bacterial phylum detected in all samples was the Firmicutes (relative abundance for all samples 96.4% to 68.

Snake fungal disease: an emerging threat to wild snakes.

Since 2006, there has been a marked increase in the number of reports of severe and often fatal fungal skin infections in wild snakes in the eastern USA. The emerging condition, referred to as snake fungal disease (SFD), was initially documented in rattlesnakes, where the infections were believed to pose a risk to the viability of affected populations. The disease is caused by Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola, a fungus recently split from a complex of fungi long referred to as the Chrysosporium anamorph of Nannizziopsis vriesii (CANV).

Aggressive biases towards similarly coloured males in Lake Malawi cichlid fishes.

In haplochromine cichlids, female mate choice based on male nuptial coloration has played an important role in speciation. Recent studies suggest that male coloration strongly influences the distribution of these fishes based on male-male aggression; males direct more aggression towards similarly coloured opponents while tolerating differently coloured individuals. We explored the role of male nuptial colour in aggression among the mbuna of Lake Malawi, examining aggression by male Metriaclima mbenjii, the red top cobalt zebra, towards conspecific opponents, similarly coloured heterospecific opponents and differently coloured heterospecifics.