RUI: Linking Ecology, Behavior, and Immunology to Spatio-Temporal Variation in Helminth TransmissionPredicting the distribution and abundance of parasites across spatial and temporal scales remains difficult because of the complex interplay of both ecological and evolutionary factors. This is especially true for parasites with complex life cycles, where the relative contribution of factors like immunology, behavior, and ecology will shift across different host species. Our understanding of how these different factors interact and the relative influence they have on coevolution and infection dynamics remains limited and largely untested, yet this information is key if we want to accurately model parasite transmission.
This five-year project will use the S. solidus tapeworm system on Vancouver Island to test the relative contributions of different hosts (immunology, behavior) and the influence of lake ecology on parasite evolution, transmission, and distribution across space and time. This project will fuse epidemiological modeling with empirical data and experiments in multiple host species: copepods, stickleback fish, and common loons. |
Meet the Team
This project is in collaboration with Dan Bolnick (University of Connecticut), Sebastian Schreiber (UC-Davis), Jessica Hite (UW-Madison) and the Biodiversity Research Institute.
This summer we completed our first field season with 47-lake survey across Vancouver Island. The field team included:
UConn: Dan Bolnick, Heather Alexander, Emma Choi, Grace Viziri
UW-Madison: Jessica Hite
Carleton: Amanda Hund, John Berini, Gwen Casey, Cate Patterson, Shira Dubin, Amy Chen
This summer we completed our first field season with 47-lake survey across Vancouver Island. The field team included:
UConn: Dan Bolnick, Heather Alexander, Emma Choi, Grace Viziri
UW-Madison: Jessica Hite
Carleton: Amanda Hund, John Berini, Gwen Casey, Cate Patterson, Shira Dubin, Amy Chen