RESEARCH
Infectious agents pose a threat to both humans and wildlife. Individuals, populations, and species vary in their ability to resist and tolerate pathogens and parasites. Understanding the factors that contribute to variation in host susceptibility and host responses to infection is important because the number of susceptible and infectious hosts in a population can impact disease transmission, distribution, and persistence.
Our lab integrates captive and field studies and uses laboratory assays and molecular techniques to understand why hosts vary in how they respond to infection. We are specifically interested in identifying social and environmental factors that shape the evolutionary ecology of host behavioral and immune defensive strategies against parasites.
Current/future projects are investigating:​​
1) the role of parental effects and the early-life environment in shaping offspring behavior, immunity, and disease susceptibility
2) how cues from sick conspecifics shape behavior, physiology, and susceptibility to infectious agents
3) the role of diet and gut microbiota in shaping host immunity and responses to parasitism
4) factors shaping the prevalence, intensity, and diversity of parasites in wild birds
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DISEASE-MEDIATED PARENTAL EFFECTS
While it is well established that genetic factors and conditional state can shape how individuals respond to infection, relatively little is known about the role of parental effects in shaping individual responses to disease. Infection can have persistent effects on the physiology and behavior or parents, which could shape the developmental environment of offspring. Thus, disease-mediated parental effects are a likely, but largely unexplored, mechanism contributing to individual variation in disease susceptibility. The Love Lab is investigating how parental disease history can impact offspring variation in behavior, immunity, and resistance to infectious agents. We are also examining several potential behavioral and physiological mechanisms through which parents can shape offspring phenotype in response to infection as well as other external stressors in the parental environment.​
BEHAVIORAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSES TO SOCIAL CUES OF DISEASE
Infection can have long-lasting effects on host physiology and behavior that can affect how an organism spreads pathogens. Infection-induced changes in host behavior and physiology can also be detected by other animals, and in turn shape the behavior of healthy individuals, with important implications for social and disease dynamics.
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Our work was featured in The Atlantic !
ROLE OF DIET AND GUT MICROBIOTA IN SHAPING HOST RESPONSES TO PARASITISM
Many factors can shape the diet of wild organisms, whether this occurs through direct manipulations by humans such as supplemental feeding, or through shifts in nutritional resources due to factors like urbanization, climate change, and invasive species. Nutrition is critical to host health and can influence host immunity and shape disease outcomes. Shifts in diet can also correspond with shifts in the gut microbiome, which regulates multiple aspects of host health including metabolism and the development of the host immune system. We have been investigating how diet quality and gut microflora affect host immunity and host-parasite interactions.
The nests of box-nesting birds like bluebirds and tree swallows are frequently parasitized by blow flies (Protocalliphora sialia), which produce larvae that feed on nestling blood and can have sublethal effects on offspring.
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Top image: Blow fly larva that was found attached to a nestling bluebird.
Bottom right image: An adult P. sialia blow fly.
Conceptual framework illustrating how the quality of nutritional resources can shape host defensive strategies against parasitism. Diet can shape host tolerance and resistance via direct and indirect pathways.
PARASITE PREVALENCE, INTENSITY, & DIVERSITY IN WILD BIRDS
The Love Lab will be conducting parasite surveys in wild birds using microscopy and molecular techniques to investigate the relationships between host traits (age, sex, physiological condition) and the prevalence, intensity (parasitemia), and diversity of blood and fecal parasites. Wild birds are frequently co-infected with multiple different parasite species, and singly versus co-infected hosts can behave differently and have very different health outcomes. Thus, we will also be exploring how social and environmental factors influence rates of co-infection across different host species.
Avian blood cells: large cell on the left is infected with Leucocytozoon sp.