Lluvia Vargas‐Gastélum

This study examines how zoo management and diet affect the gut microbiome of eastern hellbenders, finding that wild diets and release into natural habitats can restore microbial communities closer to wild-type patterns.

The paper investigates how snake skin lipid chemistry and the microbiome influence the growth of Ophidiomyces ophidiicola, revealing antifungal lipids and bacterial-fungal interactions that shape the skin microbiome.

This paper introduces DspikeIn, a tool for absolute abundance quantification in microbiomes, showing it improves resolution and reduces false discoveries compared to relative abundance methods.

This paper investigates the gut microbiomes of herptiles, showing that Basidiobolus fungi are common and interact with bacteria, potentially shaping bacterial communities through horizontal gene transfer.