10/28/2026
The Fungus Among Us ✨🍄
Just in time for spooky season, our AGR 400 Veterinary Microbiology students went hunting for the fungi haunting their daily environments. They exposed culture plates in spots of their choosing, letting them lurk for two weeks, and unmasked what crept out:
- Aspergillus: respiratory disease in birds, horses, and dogs; abortion in cattle
- Penicillium: mycotoxins in moldy feed
- Rhizopus and Mucor (Mucorales): mucormycosis and abortion in cattle
- Cladosporium: environmental allergies
- Alternaria: allergic skin disease and skin nodules
Don't be too frightened! These molds haunt every environment and only become a concern with heavy exposure or in immunocompromised animals. Students also tested their own pets for ringworm using dermatophyte test medium (DTM) cultures. Luckily, the scariest results never showed up. Every test came back negative!
In lecture, we also met some of veterinary medicine's other fungal villains:
- Microsporum canis and Trichophyton mentagrophytes: ringworm, which can spread to people
- Malassezia pachydermatis: ear and skin infections in dogs
- Candida albicans: thrush and crop infections in birds
- Blastomyces dermatitidis and Histoplasma capsulatum: systemic infections common in our region
- Cryptococcus neoformans: nasal and neurologic disease in cats
Happy Halloween! 👻
