Worms About Town 2024

Worms About Town is a citizen-science effort to carry out the first Toronto-wide screen of microsporidia infection in nematodes! Working together, we will collect and sample nematodes from around the city, and then look inside them for infectious fungi! This will let us understand more about the presence and health of Toronto’s nematodes, and help us to find new and interesting species of fungi! We use microsporidia in nematodes to understand how other species of fungi can infect other species of animals. We’ll collect at the end of each month, and update you about if we’ve managed to capture some worms, and if those worms contain microsporidia.

Thank you so much for signing up!! We’ll get a collection kit to you by the last Thursday of each month, then you can let Ed know when you’re ready for your kit to get picked up.

To help with collection here is a video demonstration of how to collect, along with what we’ll be doing with your samples once we get them back to the lab! We’ve also got a copy of the collection card and trifold just in case!

We’ve also got copies of the brochure and collection card, just in case (click to download):

Thanks so much for signing up, and we can’t wait to see what we find out!

Ed and Jonathan