Veterinary Parasitology Research Group, The University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia | College & University

Veterinary Parasitology Research Group, The University of Sydney

Locality: Sydney, Australia

Address: McMaster Building, Sydney School of Veterinary Science, The University of Sydney 2006 Sydney, NSW, Australia

Website: sydney.edu.au/vetscience/research/parasitology/index.shtml

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24.01.2022 It was a great pleasure to hear from Professor Shimon Harrus yesterday afternoon who talked to us about Ehrlichia canis. Shimon has studied canine monocytic ehrlichiosis for over 20 years and so shared with us his experience of the disease which he considers to be the most frequent vector borne disease in Israel. Thank you Shimon! We added to the seminar with a little information about the current distribution of the vector of Ehrlichia canis the brown dog tick, and the NSW Department of Primary Industries provided an update on testing. Great to see the veterinary community getting together to better understand the emerging situation of our canines. While Ehrlichia canis is not exactly a parasitic disease, we parasitologists adopt it with ease because the best control is to deal with the brown dog tick!

21.01.2022 Last year, Esther arrived on our sunny Sydney shores as a visiting postdoctoral fellow from Kenya. She had a very memorable time here and managed to see some impressive sites around New South Wales! We had a great time with Esther, and we wish her all the best in her future endeavours. During her time here, she managed to confirm the presence of Rhipicephalus microplus (Clade A) in Kenya! For those who are unaware, R. microplus is an invasive cattle tick which is threatening Kenya’s dairy industry! To find out what can be done about this pesky tick, have a read of Esther’s paper it’s OpenAccess! https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-020-04266-0

21.01.2022 How long can you keep teaching the same practical? Well, for as long as it is relevant. Fleas are like an evergreen; they aren’t going anywhere! Some 11 years ago (which seems like an eternity) we developed a practical revolving around household flea investigations with a company once called Merial. Over the 11 years we have seen some major changes in flea products on the market. There was the dawn of Frontline, rise and fall of Comfortis, followed by the introduction a...nd now dominance of isoxazolines. Our flea practical is still relevant, it works in any situation regardless of the product that dominates, because it teaches the fundamentals of the flea biology in the household. Over the years, we have deployed the same survey over and over. It was introduced during the BVSc, survived the changeover to DVM and even COVID-19. We recently plotted the data into a single graph and isn’t it amazing what longitudinal data can show. Even better 2021 students loved it the most! Look at it and we’ve done it all online. It seems like COVID-19 had no impact at all. I am sure there are a few of you that remember the cases, there is around 1200 and counting of you that had to endure this practical over the years at Sydney.

20.01.2022 It's been a while between flea Friday posts, mainly because we've been busy cooking up a few other things in the lab recently. But with the recent lockdowns we've finally had time to work on some projects put aside for a rainy day. And this is one of them! You might be aware that our recently graduated PhD student Nichola Calvani spent some time in Laos over the last few years working on flukes in livestock, but like any good parasitologist she took the opportunity to collec...t any and every other parasite she came across, such as fleas of the many cats and dogs she encountered during her travels. With the help of some great undergraduate students during their Lab Disease Investigations unit we were able to identify these fleas both morphologically and molecularly and screen them for disease-causing pathogens. The work confirms our previous findings that the dominant flea parasitising domestic pets in Southeast Asia is the cat flea (Ctenocephalides felis), followed by the oriental cat flea (Ctenocephalides orientis). It's great to see the work of our undergraduates get published, and we'd like to extend a big congratulations to all of them! Click the link below to read more about what they did and to find out what vector borne disease-causing pathogens we detected in these samples: https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S2405844020312299 Finally, Nichola was kind enough to share an image of her Lab companion in Laos, Pocky, who was a willing contributor to the study and also enjoyed getting around town in her trusty pink bike!

20.01.2022 We are not the biggest fans of the sweaty, humid climate in northern NSW at the moment...but do you know who is? - the buffalo fly!

17.01.2022 A little something inspired by a post we saw on another parasitology page. And if the boss asks: no, we're definitely not procrastinating from writing more papers...

16.01.2022 Can any of our keen vet students offer any suggestions about what might have happened 2-3 months ago that means fluke is becoming a bigger problem in NSW now?

14.01.2022 Move over fun flea Friday, it's time for terrific tick Tuesday! Our PhD student, Shona, has been working on this study for the past few years and it's just been published! Sydney is home to some of the most wonderful beaches, which we love! But, so do the ticks... In this study, we wanted to know which ticks were found in the North Shore and Northern Beaches regions, and whether biotic factors, like collection location, tick species, etc. would have an impact on the tick's microbiota. As it turns out, there's more than just the paralysis tick in Sydney, and biotic factors can influence the microbiota. If you'd like to learn more about the ticks and their microbiota in Sydney, have a read of the paper - it's Open Access! https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens9070566

14.01.2022 We had a bit of a catastrophic lab meeting last Friday! There was a cat-ception with Annie and Mio, two gorgeous tuxedo cats. But no complaints here, we love it when our furry friends commandeer our lab meetings!!!

14.01.2022 Just to mix it up a little - a Thursday lab meeting for this week! Those who have been following us for a while might recognise a familiar face. Jess Panetta was Jan's AVBS honours student in 2017, and she has returned to us this year for her DVM3 R&E project! Hope everyone is coping with the social distancing and distanced socialising! From all of us here at the USYD VetPara Lab, we hope you stay safe! #stayhome #usydonline

12.01.2022 Here's a little something for all our DVM2s about to head into exams. We're sure you know the feeling! Good luck over the next few weeks and well done staying on top of everything during such a difficult time. You've got this!

10.01.2022 Veterinary Parasitology is FINALLY back in the labs - and this time in a completely new and refreshed format! Over the last two weeks we have delivered our first two face-to-face classes. Our DVM2 students loved it and so did we. We are thrilled to see the students enthusiasm and hunger for practical experience. Take a look at the word cloud we've created from the words that students used in their feedback. Wow! We couldn't ask for much more! Makes us teachers feel very good that what was on the drawing board for months has paid off!

09.01.2022 Another purr-fect Zoom lab meeting done and dusted! Looks like it is bring your pet to work day today. We just had to share this snapshot from our lab meeting, featuring our honorary feline and canine lab members! As always, stay safe everyone. #stayhome #usydonline

09.01.2022 Eureka! The quest to find Tritrichomonas foetus in Australian cattle is finally over. For those that might not know, we have been on this quest for over 10 years. Narrowly missed it some 3 years ago, but this time around, we have it and it’s alive and kicking . In a neat collaboration with the NSW Department of Primary Industries at the Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute (EMAI) we embarked on identifying the cause of poor reproductive performance in extensively man...aged cattle. Soon we detected a number of positive bulls for T. foetus that were cultured and characterized as the ‘bovine genotype’. These cultures will sure make an appearance in parasitology practicals at Sydney. Job well done, I say! Read more in this open access article fresh from the publisher: Calvani NED, Šlapeta J, Onizawa E, Eamens K, Jenkins C, Westman ME (2021). Not gone but forgotten: Tritrichomonas foetus in extensively-managed bulls from Australia’s Northern Territory. Current Research in Parasitology and Vector-Borne Diseases 1, 100012 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crpvbd.2021.100012

07.01.2022 And just like that, it's Friday again! Happy Friday from us at the VetPara Lab! Here's a little snapshot from our fun lab meeting today. We even had a special furry guest join us today! Hope everyone stays happy, healthy, and importantly COVID safe!

05.01.2022 Pheobe was one of our honours students from last year, and she was working on finding Entamoeba in cane toads and native frogs from the Northern Territory. Considering the global anuran population is already under threat, she wanted to know whether there was a potential spill-over effect with the recently discovered Entamoeba sp. CT1. And there's good news, because Pheobe found Entamoeba in cane toads only, and not in native frog colons or faeces! A big congratulations to Phoebe for publishing her findings in the International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife!!! https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijppaw.2020.06.009

03.01.2022 There was once an undergraduate student that Jan made transcribe several years worth of diagnostic results. She hated it. He did too. But for some odd reason she came back and did a PhD with us. Why we still don't know! But what we do know is that Nichola Calvani not only submitted her thesis the other week, but her final experimental chapter just got published in the International Journal for Parasitology. Nichola unequivocally showed how livestock translocation as a conse...quence of increased demands for animal-derived protein can disturb parasite balances. Her work shows how Fasciola hepatica (liver fluke) is making headway into Southeast Asia, but also offers a diagnostic approach to track the distribution using precise qualitative and quantitative tools. For your and our amusement Nichola is not just an excellent theorist and lab rat, but loves getting her hands dirty (very literally) in the field as well. She has even taught others the art of transcribing diagnostic results using whatever tools are available. Maybe getting her to transcribe diagnostic results some 5 years ago was not that bad after all? We wish her all the best with her imminent wedding in Scotland, followed by snowmobiling and scuba diving in Iceland all the best to you and Harry! For the rest of you - read the paper, its Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpara.2019.12.002

03.01.2022 What a proud moment for us here at the Vet Para Lab! We celebrated not one, not two, but five graduations yesterday!!! Huzzah! Talk about killing two birds with one stone! While it was a different sort of graduation this year, it's still a celebration nonetheless. Three of our AVBS honours students, Emily, Phoebe and Andrew, celebrated their graduation last night and we are so proud of them! They've all got bright futures ahead of them - Emily has just embarked on a PhD with... us, Pheobe was awarded The University Medal, and Andrew is now a DVM student. Claren's Master's thesis was recently accepted, and she managed to graduate with her fellow labmates too! Lastly, we wish to introduce everyone to Dr. Nichola Calvani - though we don't think her PhD was just a 'fluke' A huge conGRADulations to these smarties. You 'mite' have graduated, but you're welcome back anytime! No stockphotos were harmed in the making of this post

01.01.2022 Hi everyone! Here's a little snapshot of our very first Zoom lab meeting! Please stay safe everyone, and from all of us here at the VetPara, we are wishing you all the best in this COVID-19 lockdown. #stayhome #usydonline