Mobile slaughter is increasingly used to improve animal welfare by reducing transport stress, but concerns remain about microbiological contamination due to delayed evisceration. This study assessed internal abdominal cavity surfaces of 58 cattle carcasses under routine mobile slaughter conditions in Germany by swabbing and analyzing total viable count (TVC) and the presence of Escherichia (E.) coli . Of 99 swabs, 46.5% exceed...

Severe storm flooding poses a major hazard to the coasts of north‐western Europe. However, the long‐term recurrence patterns of extreme coastal flooding and their governing factors are poorly understood. Therefore, high‐resolution sedimentary records of past North Atlantic storm flooding are required. This multi‐proxy study reconstructs storm‐induced overwash processes from coastal lake sediments on the Shetland Islands using...

Bacteria that engage in long‐standing associations with particular hosts are expected to evolve host‐specific adaptations that limit their capacity to thrive in other environments. Consistent with this, many gut symbionts seem to have a limited host range, based on community profiling and phylogenomics. However, few studies have experimentally investigated host specialization of gut symbionts and the underlying mechanisms have...

Gut bacteria engage in various symbiotic interactions with their host and impact gut immunity and homeostasis in different ways. In honey bees, the gut microbiota is composed of a relatively simple, but highly specialized bacterial community. One of its members, the gammaproteobacterium Frischella perrara induces the so‐called scab phenotype, a dark‐coloured band that develops on the epithelial surface of the pylorus. To under...