Publications

Corresponding Author: James E. Byers, jebyers@uga.edu For any ecosystem, interactions between parasites and their hosts are complex, and are often influenced by changing environmental conditions. Even at small spatial scales, such as coastal intertidal zones, changing conditions can affect parasite abundance and infection rates, which may ultimately regulate the distribution […]

Corresponding Author: Alyssa Gehman, alyssamina@gmail.com Summary Writer: Trippe Ross, tross312@uga.edu Host organisms and their parasites undergo physiological changes in response to climate warming, and these responses may alter the spread and transmission of infectious diseases.  Ectotherms are especially sensitive to environmental temperature, and climate warming may reduce or increase disease […]

Author for Correspondence: D.V. Volokhov, dmitriy.volokhov@fda.hhs.gov Summary Author: Trippe Ross, tross312@uga.edu Bats are known reservoir hosts for viruses, but their potential for being hosts for non-viral pathogens is not yet well studied. Due to the high frequency of direct contact between vampire bats and animals, it is likely that their […]

Mercury is a heavy metal that, when accumulated in an organism, leads to neurotoxic effects. The bioaccumulation of Mercury among aquatic food webs is well studied, but Mercury’s effect on terrestrial consumers has not been studied in depth. A terrestrial consumer’s dietary guild that contains the aquatic food web could […]

Drug resistance is an immediate issue that has faced our healthcare system since antiviral treatments began. In the 1980s, AIDS and HIV became prominent issues in the United States, and in 1995 antiretroviral therapy (ART) was introduced to slow down the virus from attacking the CD4+ T cells. This has […]

Resource provisioning and supplemental feeding typically have profound effects on parasite transmission rates among hosts. Thus, understanding how host traits affect parasite transmission might provide a means for predicting which species experience greater infection risks with resource provisioning and supplemental feeding. Here, Daniel Becker, Daniel Streicker, and Sonia Altizer explored […]

Infectious disease modeling is a critical skill, and although not all students will model infectious diseases directly, many will become the consumer of such models and will need to understand the models conceptually. This makes infectious disease modeling a useful tool for all students to learn, but many students in […]

Parasites often alter host physiology and behavior, which can enhance predation risk for infected hosts. Higher consumption of parasitized prey can in turn lead to a less parasitized prey population (the healthy herd hypothesis). Loxothylacus panopaei is a non-native castrating barnacle parasite on the mud crab Eurypanopeus depressus along the […]

Many pathogens, including those infecting insects, are transmitted via dormant stages shed into the environment, where they must persist until encountering a susceptible host. Understanding how abiotic conditions influence environmental persistence and how these factors influence pathogen spread are crucial for predicting patterns of infection risk. Here, Richard Hall and […]

Utility analysis is quite useful in quantifying direct and indirect species relations in a compartmental ecosystems model, regardless of its size or complexity. It serves as a basis for the formulation of system-wide synergism and mutualism measures. A significant issue that limits the applicability of utility analysis is that its […]