Avian blood parasites play a crucial role in wildlife health and ecosystem dynamics, exhibiting heterogeneous spatial distribution influenced by various factors. Although factors underlying heterogeneity in infection with blood parasites have been explored in many avian hosts, their importance in the context of host species and the parasite taxon remains poorly understood, particularly in cohabiting host species. Using next-generation sequencing for parasite screening, we investigate the association between Haemoproteus, Plasmodium and Trypanosoma infections in relation to individual parameters, host densities and landscape features in 3 cavity-nesting passerines: great tit (Parus major), blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) and collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis) in a highly fragmented forest habitat. Overall, Haemoproteus infections predominated, followed by Plasmodium and Trypanosoma, with great tits most and collared flycatchers least parasitized. There were no common patterns across host species in the probability of infection with locally transmitted parasites from each genus. Specifically, in all cases, the effect of particular parameters, if present, was observed only in 1 host species. Body condition influenced Haemoproteus and Plasmodium infections differently in tits. Host density, whether own species or all pooled, explained Haemoproteus infections in great tits and collared flycatchers, and Plasmodium in great tits. Landscape metrics, such as moisture index and distance to coast edge and pastures, affected infection probability in specific host–parasite combinations. Relative risk maps revealed infection risk gradients, but spatial variation repeatability over time was low. Our study highlights the complex dynamics of avian blood parasites in multi-host systems, shedding light on host–parasite interactions in natural ecosystems.

Eleonora's falcon (Falco eleonorae Géné, 1839) is a well-known long-distance migrant of the Afro-Palaearctic flyway, a summer breeder of the Mediterranean region and North-west Africa and a winter resident of Madagascar and surrounding areas, thus characterized as a double endemic. Within the context of a long-term monitoring and conservation programme on Antikythira Island, Greece, which accommodates one of the largest concentrations of breeding pairs of Eleonora's falcons globally, birds were subjected to regular inspections for the presence of ticks from 2017 to 2023. In total, 104 adults and 149 nymphs (all belonging to Haemaphysalis genus) were collected. All ticks, apart from 2 nymphs, exhibited broadly salient palpi and did not possess the pronounced palpal segment 2 spurs or spur-like angles that are characteristic of adults, nymphs and most larvae of Rhipistoma, thus placed them in the Ornithophysalis subgenus. Following comprehensive morphological assessment and genetic analysis of the mitochondrial genome by means of next-generation sequencing of both adult and nymphal stages of the ticks, our empirical findings substantiate the delineation of a previously unclassified species. This taxonomic assignment situates the newly described species within the Ornithophysalis subgenus and the Haemaphysalis doenitzi group, marking its presence for the first time within the Western Palaearctic region.

Digenea Carus, 1863 represent a highly diverse group of parasitic platyhelminths that infect all major vertebrate groups as definitive hosts. Morphology is the cornerstone of digenean systematics, but molecular markers have been instrumental in searching for a stable classification system of the subclass and in establishing more accurate species limits. The first comprehensive molecular phylogenetic tree of Digenea published in 2003 used two nuclear rRNA genes (ssrDNA = 18S rDNA and lsrDNA = 28S rDNA) and was based on 163 taxa representing 77 nominal families, resulting in a widely accepted phylogenetic classification. The genetic library for the 28S rRNA gene has increased steadily over the last 15 years because this marker possesses a strong phylogenetic signal to resolve sister-group relationships among species and to infer phylogenetic relationships at higher levels of the taxonomic hierarchy. Here, we have updated the database of 18S and 28S rRNA genes until December 2017, we have added newly generated 28S rDNA sequences and we have reassessed phylogenetic relationships to test the current higher-level classification of digeneans (at the subordinal and subfamilial levels). The new dataset consisted of 1077 digenean taxa allocated to 106 nominal families for 28S and 419 taxa in 98 families for 18S. Overall, the results were consistent with previous higher-level classification schemes, and most superfamilies and suborders were recovered as monophyletic assemblages. With the advancement of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, new phylogenetic hypotheses from complete mitochondrial genomes have been proposed, although their power to resolve deep levels of trees remains controversial. Since data from NGS methods are replacing other widely used markers for phylogenetic analyses, it is timely to reassess the phylogenetic relationships of digeneans with conventional nuclear rRNA genes, and to use the new analysis to test the performance of genomic information gathered from NGS, e.g. mitogenomes, to infer higher-level relationships of this group of parasitic platyhelminths.

While some single-celled intestinal parasites are direct causes of diarrhoea and other types of intestinal pathology, the impact of other gut micro-eukaryotes on human health remains elusive. The fact that some common luminal intestinal parasitic protists (CLIPPs) have lately been found more often in healthy than in diseased individuals has fuelled the hypothesis that some parasites might in fact be protective against disease. To this end, the use of new DNA technologies has helped us investigate trans-kingdom relationships in the gut. However, research into these relationships is currently hampered by the limited data available on the genetic diversity within the CLIPPs genera, which results in limited efficacy of publicly available DNA sequence databases for taxonomic annotation of sequences belonging to the eukaryotic component of the gut microbiota. In this paper, I give a brief overview of the status on CLIPPs in human health and disease and challenges related to the mapping of intestinal eukaryotic diversity of the human gut.

Medicinal plants are the vital source of numerous structurally diverse pharmacologically active metabolites collectively called as secondary metabolites finding extensive applications in traditional systems of medicine and in pharmaceutical industries. Several distinctive and complex pathways operate in an interactive manner via metabolic networks that are responsible for the accumulation of such highly specialized metabolites. Secondary metabolites are believed to play a wide spectrum of physiological and functional roles in plants, many of which being investigated and supported by the experimental studies. Biosynthetic pathway related studies on various aspects in these medicinal plants have been found very tedious owing to several issues in plants such as considerably lower metabolite concentrations in native tissues, existence at different locations, and highly complex multi-step pathways, etc. Pathway elucidation and gene/enzyme discovery for studying metabolic pathway evolution and subsequent engineering could be better achieved by mining various pathway databases and reconstruction of metabolic networks available at different omics databases. Though medicinal plants have a limited range of genomic sequences available, however recently, next generation sequencing is being widely used to generate a comprehensive transcriptomic resource for these plants. It is anticipated that databases and resources generated from these studies are likely to play a key role towards the study and exploitation of metabolites from medicinal plants in near future. In this review, we have discussed next generation sequencing approaches, which were used for the generation of transcriptomic resources for several medicinally important plants. The relevance of transcriptomic approaches in curation of the pathways linked with the synthesis of major secondary metabolites along with their precursors of pharmaceutical importance in medicinal plants is also comprehensively analysed.

Mucuna pruriens (L.) DC is a tropical legume cover crop with promising nutritional and agronomic potentials. It is also a key source of 3,4 dihydroxy-L-phenylalanine (L-Dopa) – a precursor of dopamine used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. However, lack of well-characterized germplasm plus poor accessibility to genomic resources has hindered its breeding programs. Furthermore, the cause and effect of various biotic and abiotic stresses impacting yield is also little studied. Systematic collection and evaluation of Indian germplasm by our group revealed presence of a diverse gene pool in India that can support a variety of breeding needs. The stability of L-Dopa trait across environments examined through Genotype and environment (G × E) interaction studies, as well as feasibility check on barcoding and phylogenetic analyses based on karyotype and conserved nuclear and chloroplast genes showed promising outcome. Germplasm screening for select biotic abiotic stresses identified resilient genotypes. Advances in use of DNA markers for diversity analysis, linkage map development, tagging of genes/quantitative trait loci for qualitative and quantitative traits, and progress in genomics are presented.