Tamara Szentivanyi 🦇🦠🦟

We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n

Variations in annual dengue intensities are explained by temperature anomalies

Our new work led by Abbey Porzucek, @rafalpx.bsky.social, @colincarlson.bsky.social, Dan Weinberger to develop a method to compare relative dengue intensity between years and countries.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Graph showing temperature anomaly and other covariates' effects on "RISc" score globally and by region

NEW!🦠🌡️ : What makes a "dengue year" like 2023-24? It's hard to pin down an answer unless you can homogenize out all the spatial variation and temporal trends. But once you do, the answer is pretty clean: dengue years are hot years.

Last one of the year (unless...?) 👉 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Drones detect deadly virus in Arctic whales' breath Whale breath collected by drones is giving clues to the health of wild humpbacks and other whales.

BBC News - Drones detect deadly virus in Arctic whales' breath
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... (it is, in case you're wondering, cetacean morbillivirus)

Ticks on an Eel: Museum Specimen is a First of its Kind Two ticks found on an 1873 electric eel specimen mark the first recorded case of ticks parasitizing a fish—but only documented just this year.

An eel donated to a natural history museum in 1873 had two ticks embedded in its skin, making it the first known instance of ticks parasitizing a fish. But it was only first documented this year, when a tick specialist identified the ticks and reported the case in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

Check out this new paper put out by my collaborators and me! Led by Jose Maria Garcia-Carrasco and Javi Illan from WSU Entomology, we created models using tick, host, and environmental data to predict the distribution of different ticks and tick-borne diseases in North America. 🗺️🦌🦠🕷️

Check it out! 👇🏼

🦠🧫 It feels like a dream come true to be able to join #ESCAIDE2025 in person in Warsaw this year. I’m really excited for the talks and research ahead 🦟🧪

My 1st first-author paper is out as a preprint! Excited to share the fascinating story of marine-feeding vampire bats 🌊🦇 We found that marine-diet bats were exposed to #H5#AvianFlu 🦠 from marine wildlife and could potentially spread it to livestock via blood feed🩸
doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.09.686930

Happy to be in beautiful Zurich to present and hear from so many amazing speakers at the Citizen Science 4 Health Conference! 🇨🇭🦠🦟👩‍💻

Demographic shifts could boost drug-resistant infections across Europe The rates of bloodstream infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria will increase substantially across Europe in the next five years, driven largely by aging populations, according to a new paper…

#Demographic shifts could boost #drug-resistant #infections across #Europe ...

| #drugresistance | #bacteria | #microbes | #pathogens | #AMR | #Antimicrobialresistance | By @plos.org via @sciencex.bsky.social

Crab Louse (Pthirus pubis) The crab louse or pubic louse (Pthirus pubis) is an insect that is an obligate ectoparasite of humans, feeding exclusively on blood. The crab louse usually is found in the person's pubic hair. Althoug...

And now for something completely different: #EntSoc25 Entomologists! Please contribute to the iNaturalist collection of pubic lice! It's mostly from the EU at the moment. www.inaturalist.org/taxa/395978-...

This is figure 5, which shows global hotspots and coldspots of non-native mosquito introduction and establishment, and their socio-economic and environmental drivers.

Globalization has accelerated the spread of mosquito species that transmit human diseases. An analysis in Nature Communications shows that 45 disease-vector mosquito species have been introduced to non-native regions worldwide. go.nature.com/4hn6ogW 🧪

Vaccine-Preventable Disease: A Global Tracker | Think Global Health This map is updated weekly and visualizes outbreaks of nine childhood diseases in collaboration with the International Society for Infectious Diseases

I'd love to say lots of nice things about this invaluable preventable disease tracker from @monscience.bsky.social and team at Think Global Health. It's an incredible resource.

But I can't get over my anger & sadness that this resource is even needed.
www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/vacc...

Floral-scented fungus lures mosquitoes to their doom In the battle against mosquito-borne diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people each year, scientists turned to an unlikely ally: a fungus that smells like flowers.

#Floral-scented #fungus lures #mosquitoes to their doom ..

| #fungi | #flowers | #Metarhizium | #longifolene | By @univofmaryland.bsky.social via @sciencex.bsky.social

The text reads: “Resistance to antibiotics is widespread and increasing, threatening treatment of common infections. 1 in 6 bacterial infections worldwide were resistant to antibiotics in 2023.”

New WHO report finds 1 in 6 bacterial infections were resistant to antibiotic treatments.

Data from over 100 countries warns that rising resistance to essential antibiotics poses a growing threat to global health.

Read more 👉bit.ly/438Ta1u

La dengue aux commandes YouTube video by Institut Pasteur

Does #dengue virus hijack #mosquitoes' brain? Study led by Felix Hol @pasteur.fr discovered that infected mosquitoes take smaller blood meals. As a result, they bite more often, and potentially infect infect more people.

(video in French with English subtitles available)
youtu.be/2u_qckfAQa4?...

Drs @minealtinli.bsky.social‬ @spleonard1.bsky.social‬ @alainkohlvirology.bsky.social & @mosquitomicrobe.bsky.social review #bacteria-mediated #dsRNA delivery for #mosquito-borne #virus control. #RNAi #vectorcontrol #symbiont #engineering #mosquito #arbovirus

www.cell.com/trends/paras...

World Mosquito Day 2025: Europe sets new records for mosquito-borne diseases - ECDC supporting Member States in adapting to ‘new normal’ ECDC has warned that record breaking outbreaks of West Nile virus (WNV) infection and chikungunya virus disease point to a ‘new normal’ in Europe.

"Europe is entering a new phase — where longer, more widespread and more intense transmission of mosquito borne disease is becoming the new normal."

www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-even...

Leishmaniasis is 95% fatal if untreated — yet it’s still overlooked, and media coverage is low.

Our new report shows what gets decision-makers to pay attention ⤵️
wellcomeopenresearch.org/documents/10...

Happy to share our newest work on bats and Trypanosoma infection 🦇🦠

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Vector of the Month: #Hyalomma #marginatum, the Mediterranean Hyalomma, a two-host #tick transmitting pathogens to #humans & #livestock in the Palearctic, authored by Dr Agustin Estrada-Peña.

authors.elsevier.com/a/1lNPB5Eb1x...

As we observe #WorldZoonosesDay today, we revisit a study highlighting the potential for some of the most important zoonotic diseases to spread to humans as a result of the legal and illegal wildlife trade.

Learn more about the findings here: tinyurl.com/5fecssuu

From coop to cave: Inside the high-tech hunt for H5N1 and Disease X The Telegraph joined scientists in Cambodia’s vibrant wet markets and vast bat caves to test revolutionary new disease surveillance tools

The Virology Unit at IPC is constantly working to make surveillance/Early Warning faster, better, cheaper — from air sampling to portable labs. Happy to have our work featured in this @telegraphnews.bsky.social article by @sneweyy.bsky.social 🦠🧪🐓💉🥼😷

Read more: www.telegraph.co.uk/global-healt...

Absolutely incredible turnout for Budapest Pride! So proud of all the organizers, including some old friends, who estimate hundreds of thousands— major embarrassment to Orban

Happy to see our latest work online 🐶🪱🦟:

Complementing community science with xenomonitoring: Understanding the eco-epidemiology of Dirofilaria immitis infection in dogs and mosquitoes

parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Tiny swimmers YouTube video by MPIPKS

🐠🦠Why can’t bacteria swim like fish?
At microscopic scales, physics changes — viscosity rules! Researchers at our institute study how microbes like E. coli overcome this challenge with clever strategies like run-and-tumble.

Watch our new video:

youtu.be/drwCRRD7CGY?...

Painted bats belong alive in the wild — not dead on walls. Tell Amazon to stop selling painted woolly bats so their populations can again flourish in the wild — where they belong.

Wildlife belongs in the wild, not hung up on walls as decoration.

That's why we're urging Amazon to join Etsy and eBay and stop selling painted woolly bats so their populations can again flourish in the wild — where they belong. Add your voice. ⬇️

Out of all small mammals, bats are *especially* poorly suited for these sorts of daft trinkets: long-lived (some species live into their 30s) and slow-breeding, their populations can easily get hammered. Please sign 🦇

Phylogenetic insights into the transmission dynamics of arthropod-borne viruses - Nature Reviews Genetics Arthropod-borne viruses have a substantial impact on global health, with climate change and urbanization exacerbating their emergence. Integrating genomic surveillance and phylogenetic models with eco...

Phylogenetic insights into the transmission dynamics of arthropod-borne viruses

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great work by Verity Hill and team

Q fever – an old zoonosis with a better diagnosis Q fever or 'query fever' is a vaccine-preventable zoonosis first described in Australia in 19377. The causative agent8 for this disease is the obligate intracellular coccobacillus Coxiella burnetii. The bacterium has two structural versions called large cell and small cell variants (LCV and SCV) - and two antigenic forms, Phase I and Phase II. The SCV exhibits exceptional environmental resistance, surviving on wool, meat, and milk for periods ranging from one to 40 months after being shed from infected animals.

An overview of Q Fever and some musings on why numbers of Coxiella burnetii infections were higher than usual in 2024.