Education
Country
Cities
Occupations
Employers

Tracking more than 125 million Google+ Users and more than 1.5 million Pages

Choose Filters
Tommy Leung

Tommy Leung

Parasitologist, Evolutionary Biologist, Researcher, Lecturer

Parasitologist and evolutionary biologist who also happen to write for a blog about parasites, and likes to draw things sometimes.
I am a biologist who conduct studies on various ecological and evolutionary biology aspects of parasitism/symbiosis. I also write for the Parasite of the Day blog, which I co-administrate with its founder, Susan Perkins of the American Natural History Museum.
Outside of my professional field, my favourite thing to do is drawing - some of which (but not all) are inspired by my scientific work. My drawings can be found on my dA account.

58,427 -11
Tommy Leung +3.1 pluskred
Get embed code
Is this you? Login via Google+ to confirm
your identity and see enhanced statistics
Evolutionary biologist parasitologist English University of Otago Person

Ranked: 692nd in Male Users (by Followers)

Ranked: 721st in English Users (by Followers)

Ranked: 961st in English Most Engaging Today (by Engagement)

Ranked: 1086th in English Most Engaging Today (by Shares)

Ranked: 1114th in English Most Engaging Today (by Average Reach)

Ranked: 1213th in Users (by Followers)

Ranked: 1315th in English Most Engaging Today (by +1's)

Ranked: 1354th in English Most Engaging Today (by Total Reach)

Date Following Followers Gained
Recent Popular Posts
+33
15 Shares
About 12 weeks ago Botfly Maggot Extracting Party
...sounds like the best party ever! Entomologists sure know how to have fun and I am so jealous that I wasn't there. Video by +Christina Bergey. 
read more
+28
8 Shares
About 9 weeks ago I've been rather sceptical of all this "DeExtinction" talk because I think that it is the wrong way to approach biological conservation. I fear that (i) it would make people become (even more) complacent about species going extinction, and (ii) you might be able to bring back an isolated species but not the ecosystem which it lived in. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but be excited at the prospect that a team of Australian scientists may be able to bring the gastric-breeding frog back from extinction. The gastric-breeding frog is an extraordinary amphibian, to find out more see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric-brooding_frog
#conservationbiology   #herpetology   #deextinction   #amphibians   #scienceeveryday  
read more
+26
4 Shares
About 11 weeks ago Science Outreach: FAIL
So apparently +Business Insider thinks the best way of getting people to accept science and scientists is to tell them just how HAWT some scientists are. Sex sells, I get it, but it also clearly shows that Business Insider doesn't "get" what science is all about and why people are drawn to it (here's a clue: not because of "teh hawt"). If this is their idea of outreach, I hate to think of the kind of people that are trying to attract into science. If you really want to know what scientists are like, why not check out this blog instead: http://lookslikescience.tumblr.com/ I'm on there too (http://lookslikescience.tumblr.com/post/16952708349/tommy-evolutionary-biology-parasitology-and) which goes to show you don't have to be "sexy" to be fascinated by science and be a damn good scientist.
read more
+24
9 Shares
About 12 weeks ago Nice sperm, shame about your genes
The Amazon molly Poecilia formosa is an odd little fish. Despite what you might think based on its name, it is not found in the Amazon. Instead, it is found in Tampico, Mexico. The reason for the "Amazon" bit of their name is that it is an all-female species. So how does it reproduce? Well there are species of vertebrate animals which are capable of parthenogensis, whereby the female essentially give births to an offspring that is a clone of herself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis). But with this fish, there's more to it than that. An Amazon molly is a sexual parasite which needs the sperm of  closely-related species to trigger the develop of her eggs into embryos, but the sperm is prevented from contributing any genetic material to the offspring. To find out more about the how and why of these sexual parasites, follow the link to read +Brian Switek's post on the topic.
Sharing for +ScienceSunday 
#biology   #evolutionarybiol
read more
+22
20 Shares
About 13 weeks ago Plant Viruses DO NOT Infect Mammals
This paper was brought to my attention by Prof. Gary Foster (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/biology/people/gary-d-foster/overview.html) on Twitter. The research group behind it claimed Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) can infect mice lungs. That's what they claimed but that's not what their study actually showed. There are plenty of reasons to not smoke, but being infected with a plant virus is certainly NOT one of them.

Firstly, I must point out that TMV is an extremely stable virus (see the links at the bottom of this post). It can persist in the environment for a very long time and stay infective (to mostly solanaceous plants). When placed in storage at 4°C/40°F, they can remain infectious (to mostly solanaceous plants) after 50 years. And that's how they spread - they are able to persist in the environment and contaminate anything which may come into contact with a host plant. To be able to do that, it must be very stable and not easily altered or destro
read more
+20
12 Shares
About 10 weeks ago Opting out of Parasitism
Parasitism is often thought of by many as an evolutionary blind alley, as in "Once you go parasitic, you can never go back". But that does not necessarily have to be the case, and the ancestors of dust mites might be one such former parasite, as explained in this post by +Christie Wilcox. If they had indeed originally evolved form parasites, it might also explain why they can trigger such strong allergic reactions as our immune system recognise them as former foes. See also: Evolutionary loss of parasitism by nematodes? Discovery of a free-living filaroid nematode
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16884014
#biology   #parasitology   #Acarology   #parasitismeveryday   #scienceeveryday  
read more
+20
2 Shares
About 8 weeks ago From what I can tell, a number of you would have seen this story by now, but I thought I would post it here anyway for those who might have missed it. Basically, the other day Facebook users were surprised by the fact that the very popular I Fucking Love Science page is run by a young woman, forgets that it is the year 2013 and collectively lose their minds. Note: I don't think this type of reaction is an exclusively Facebook phenomenon.
#STEMWomen   #womeninscience  
read more
+19
5 Shares
About 14 weeks ago Dinosaur Alphabet
For the last few months, +Brian Switek at the Laelaps and Dinosaur Tracking blogs has been going through the alphabet and posting about different genera of dinosaurs with a genus name that starts with a particular letter. He is up to "Q" in his latest post and it featured a Chinese sauropod (in time for #ChineseNewYear  perhaps?). You can follow links in the post below to see all the other posts in the Dinosaur Alphabet series. Sharing for +ScienceSunday 
#paleontology   #dinosaurs   #mesozoic   #paleobiology   #sciencesunday  
read more
+19
11 Shares
About 8 weeks ago Bacteria Commit Suicide To Stop Viruses In Their Tracks
When a virus successfully infects a host bacterium, the host essentially becomes an incubator for new virus particles. Once the new batch of virus are assembled, the host bacterium bursts and unleash a flood of infectious viruses upon the host bacterium's neighbours, many of which could be the original host's close relatives.
To counter this menace, some bacteria have evolved to commit suicide when they are infected. They hit the self-destruct button and sacrifice themselves for the greater good, thus interrupting the viral replication process. However, as with all defensive measures, some viruses have also evolved clever countermeasures that can interrupt the bacteria's attempt at altruisitic suicide, for example see: Viral Evasion of a Bacterial Suicide System by RNA–Based Molecular Mimicry Enables Infectious Altruism
http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1003023
The new paper on bacteri
read more
+18
13 Shares
About 4 weeks ago The Changing Lives of Ants
Ants are well-known for their sophisticated society with distinctive division of labour between the reproductive queens and sterile workers and soldiers. But a new study which tracked the movement of individual ants in a colony reveals that there is more to their division of labour than just these physical castes. While the worker ants look superficially similar, they are actually further divided into separate groups with distinct roles - nursing the youngs, cleaning the nest, foraging for food - and that as they age, the role of individual worker ants also changed.
#biology   #entomology   #eusociality   #insects   #bugseveryday   #scienceeveryday  
read more