Quantification of pathogen levels is necessary to compare responses to pathogen exposure: Comment on Davy et al. "The other white-nose syndrome transcriptome"

When studying host responses to the presence of pathogens, the pathogen levels should be verified within the samples. The RNA-Seq samples from Davy et al. (2017) do not contain detectable Pseudogymnoascus destructans pathogen levels compared to other studies. Future studies will be necessary to determine how hosts resistant to white-nose syndrome respond differently than susceptible hosts at the whole-transcriptome level. Linked Article: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4035.