Our lab group is part of the School of Natural Resources at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture. The ultimate goal of our research group is to improve our ability to predict and mitigate the negative impacts of pathogens on wildlife populations. To this end, we are interested in how hot hosts, hot species, and hotspots affect pathogen invasion and persistence. We combine novel statistical and mathematical modeling approaches with laboratory experiments and field data to identify how heterogeneity at the scale of the individual host to the landscape affects disease dynamics. By unraveling the contributions of heterogeneity across biological scales, we seek to obtain actionable predictions through a mechanistic understanding of host-parasite interactions. While our research spans a range of wildlife systems, we often address our research questions using amphibians and their parasites.

Our lab group is part of the RIBBiTR Biology Integration Institute funded by NSF to conduct research and training that integrates across sub-disciplines in the biological sciences to better understand how living systems achieve resilience to emerging infectious diseases and other global change stressors.