My research program explores the ecology of parasites and pathogens in a changing world. I’m interested in understanding whether, how, and why parasite communities respond to human-driven environmental change and my lab approaches this question in several ways. Historical ecology allows us to reconstruct long time series of parasite change and infer environmental correlates of that change; we collect these data using parasitological dissection of natural history specimens, with meta-analysis of the existing literature, by resurrecting unpublished government, institutional, or personal datasets, and with archived industry specimens. We also employ natural and manipulative experiments in contemporary marine and freshwater ecosystems. We’re interested in answering big questions like, “Is the world wormier than it used to be?“, but we also apply the principles of parasite ecology for immediate practical applications, like the control of aquaculture pests and of human infectious diseases.

Courses

• FISH 406 – Parasite Ecology
• FISH 511 – Historical Ecology
• FISH 521 – Research Proposal Writing for Graduate Students

Expertise

• Ecology of parasites and pathogens
• Effects of environmental change on disease transmission
• Marine and freshwater biology
• Schistosomiasis and other zoonoses
• Spatial ecology
• Biodiversity
• Conservation biology