Culicoides biting midges are important vectors of diverse microbes such as viruses, protozoa, and nematodes that cause diseases in wild and domestic animals. To investigate the role of microbial communities in midge larval habitat utilization in the wild, we characterized microbial communities (bacterial, protistan, fungal and metazoan) in soils from disturbed (bison and cattle grazed) and undisturbed (non-grazed) pond and spring potential midge larval habitats. We evaluated the influence of habitat and grazing disturbance and their interaction on microbial communities, diversity, presence of midges, and soil properties.

In order to determine if pasture dragging suppresses the emergence of horn flies (Haematobia irritans) and face flies (Musca autumnalis) from dung pats in a Mid-Atlantic North American climate, bovine dung pats were spread with pasture drag or plaster knife and covered with emergence traps, and emerging flies quantified.

The following is taken directly from the introduction of the paper. In this study, we used a pure drift FST model [11] which assumes all animals originated from the same ancestral population. This model was applied to taurine and zebu animals to identify loci under selection. These two groups correspond to the main (and most ancestral) separation of domestic cattle, which in most but not all cases corresponds to animals adapted to tropical and temperate environments. The identification of such loci can aid in the identification of genes and genomic variants that are related to environmental adaptation and/or selection derived from human agro-pastoral activities.

This study produced reference quality genomes of two cattle ticks Rhipicephalus microplus and Rhipicephalus annulatus, which can be used to identify drug targets with acaricidal activity and refine anti-tick vaccine approaches.