The accelerated rate of disease emergence in recent decades underscores the need to understand conditions that promote or dampen epidemics. Theoretical models consistently show that epidemics are smaller in populations with higher among‐individual heterogeneity in susceptibility. Experimental tests of these predictions are rare but critical for understanding how heterogeneity in susceptibility shapes epidemics in natural syste...

Transmissible cancers are clonal lineages of neoplastic cells able to infect multiple hosts, spreading through populations in the environment as an infectious disease. Transmissible cancers have been identified in Tasmanian devils, dogs, and bivalves. Several lineages of bivalve transmissible neoplasias (BTN) have been identified in multiple bivalve species. In 2019 in Puget Sound, Washington, USA, disseminated neoplasia was o...

Predicting the effects of climate change on plant disease is critical for protecting ecosystems and food production. Here, we show how disease pressure responds to short‐term weather, historical climate and weather anomalies by compiling a global database (4339 plant–disease populations) of disease prevalence in both agricultural and wild plant systems. We hypothesised that weather and climate would play a larger role in disea...

Peat mosses ( Sphagnum spp.) are keystone species in boreal peatlands, where they dominate net primary productivity and facilitate the accumulation of carbon in thick peat deposits. Sphagnum mosses harbor a diverse assemblage of microbial partners, including N 2 ‐fixing (diazotrophic) and CH 4 ‐oxidizing (methanotrophic) taxa that support ecosystem function by regulating transformations of carbon and nitrogen. Here, we investi...