Dr Heather Fergussin is researching the advent of Usuthu virus as far north as Scotland.
It was something infectious disease expert Heather Ferguson never expected to see in her lifetime: a mosquito-borne virus originally from Africa spreading in Scotland.
But a laboratory result confirmed just that: in April, UK authorities said that Usutu virus had been identified in blackbirds in Scotland for the first time.
Despite climate change pushing temperatures higher, scientists still thought it too cool in Scotland for Usutu to thrive.
The "shock" discovery was a "clarion call that... some risks might be coming here sooner than we thought," said Ferguson, a professor of infectious disease ecology at the University of Glasgow.
