Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. From now until the launch of Oxford Events, new events cannot be published or edited on OxTalks while all existing records are migrated to the new platform. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period.
From 16th, Oxford Events will launch on a new website: events.ox.ac.uk, and event submissions will resume. You will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
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.
