Stress bites! Researchers study mosquito/bird interactions

When researchers from the University of South Florida (USF) and colleagues investigated how the stress hormone, corticosterone, affects how birds cope with West Nile virus, they found that birds with higher levels of stress hormone were twice as likely to be bitten by mosquitoes that transmit the virus. Their studies have implications for the transmission of other viruses such as Eastern Equine Encephalitis, and perhaps even Zika, both known to be carried by the kind of mosquitoes used in this study.

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