A secret war between cane toads and parasitic lungworms is raging across Australia

By Greg Brown, Postdoctoral researcher, Macquarie University
Lee A Rollins, Scientia Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney
Rick Shine, Professor in Evolutionary Biology, Macquarie University

When the first cane toads were brought from South America to Queensland in 1935, many of the parasites that troubled them were left behind. But deep inside the lungs of at least one of those pioneer toads lurked small nematode lungworms.

Almost a century later, the toads are evolving and spreading across the Australian continent. In new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, we show that the lungworms too are evolving: for reasons we do not yet understand, worms taken from…

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