November 9, 2018
Former UVA undergraduate David Tyson, now in medical school at the University of Florida, recently published a paper in the journal Plant Pathology entitled “Anther smut disease caused by Microbotryum on berry campion Silene baccifera: endemic pathogen or host-shift?”
Much of the paper was based on David’s Independent Study project which showed that anther-smut disease on berry-campion in northern Europe (where the species is rare) is the result of spillover of the pathogen from the much more commonly occurring white or red campion. The disease may have contributed to the extinction of berry campion in the UK. To read the article, please click here.