Assessing the impact of natural enemies of plant and animal pathogens on their host's population dynamics is needed to determine the role of hyperparasites in affecting disease dynamics, and their potential for use in efficient control strategies of pathogens. Here, we focus on the long‐term study describing metapopulation dynamics of an obligate pathogen, the powdery mildew ( P odosphaera plantaginis ) naturally infecting its...

Studies focusing on geographical genetic patterns of commensal species and on human history complement each other and provide proxies to trace common colonization events. On Madagascar, the unintentional introduction and spread of the commensal species R attus rattus by people may have left a living clue of human colonization patterns and history. In this study, we addressed this question by characterizing the genetic structur...

Genome scans using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers became popular in nonmodel species within the last 10 years, but few studies have tried to characterize the anonymous outliers identified. This study follows on from an AFLP genome scan in the black rat ( Rattus rattus ), the reservoir of plague ( Yersinia pestis infection) in Madagascar. We successfully sequenced 17 of the 22 markers previously shown to...

The black rat ( Rattus rattus ) is the main reservoir of plague ( Yersinia pestis infection) in Madagascar’s rural zones. Black rats are highly resistant to plague within the plague focus (central highland), whereas they are susceptible where the disease is absent (low altitude zone). To better understand plague wildlife circulation and host evolution in response to a highly virulent pathogen, we attempted to determine genetic...