The third edition of Flow Cytometry Guidelines provides the key aspects to consider when performing flow cytometry experiments and includes comprehensive sections describing phenotypes and functional assays of all major human and murine immune cell subsets. Notably, the Guidelines contain helpful tables highlighting phenotypes and key differences between human and murine cells. Another useful feature of this edition is the flow cytometry analysis of clinical samples with examples of flow cytometry applications in the context of autoimmune diseases, cancers as well as acute and chronic infectious diseases. Furthermore, there are sections detailing tips, tricks and pitfalls to avoid. All sections are written and peer-reviewed by leading flow cytometry experts and immunologists, making this edition an essential and state-of-the-art handbook for basic and clinical researchers.

Mass cytometry is increasingly employed in larger immune profiling studies involving data acquisitions across several days and multiple sites. For gaining a maximum of information from respective data by computational analyses, several techniques have been developed to minimize noise in mass cytometric data sets, such as sample banking, standardized instrument setup, sample barcoding, and signal normalization. However, the repeated preparation of cocktails composed of isotope-tagged antibodies remained a significant source of error. We here show that premixed antibody cocktails fail to deliver expected staining patterns when stored at 4 C for 4 weeks. As a solution, we developed and tested a cryopreservation method for highly multiplexed antibody cocktails for mass cytometry including lanthanide, palladium, and platinum conjugates that yielded stable staining patterns for at least 9 months when stored at temperatures below −80 C. Using frozen aliquots of antibody cocktails is an economic and flexible approach to significantly improve data consistency in large mass cytometry studies with repetitive staining/measurement cycles spanning several days or involving multiple data acquisition sites.

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The highest density of bat species in the world is reached in South and Central America. Representatives of nine families occur in this gigantic region between the southern part of the continental twin and the land bridge to North America. They display a high degree of ecological variance: exemplified by species with extensive or endemic distributions, specialist and generalist feeding habits, colonial and solitary roosting, and those that are migratory or permanently resident. However, they are all exposed to the deleterious effects of parasites. In terms of the number of species and higher taxa, the diversity of parasites considerably exceeds that of their hosts. A total of 172 bat species of 9 families as hosts and 273 ectoparasite species are summarised in this review. We included data from 20 South and Central American countries. Of foremost importance are Diptera of the families Nycteribiidae and Streblidae with 187 different species. For the last mentioned family, we recorded more than 61 % of the worldwide known species. Further, fleas (Siphonaptera) (8 species), bugs (Hemiptera) (4 species) and Arachnida of the orders Ixodida and Mesostigmata (74 species) are also represented. The large numbers of species, like Basilia carteri, belong to the two families of Diptera, which parasitise only on bats. Together with their high degree of specialisation, it is an indication for their high rate of adaptation. Investigations on the parasite fauna of bats have been conducted in the named areas with different frequency and intensity. This chapter contains a reference list of the bats that have been scientifically studied in South and Central America so far, with respect to their associated parasites. We