OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Many animal and plant species harbour microbes in their microbiota that protect them from parasite infection. These ‘protective microbes’ can be a significant component of host defence. Using experimental evolution of a novel, tripartite interaction, my group has demonstrated that a costly bacterium living in worms can rapidly evolve to defend their animal hosts against infection by virulent parasites, thus crossing the parasitism-mutualism continuum. We also show that these protective microbes can drive major changes in host tolerance, parasite virulence and coevolutionary dynamics. Our results indicate that the host microbiome is important in shaping infection outcomes, now and over evolutionary time.
