Host-parasite interactions

Altitude effects on immune system investment

Harsh conditions at high elevations make energy conservation extremely challenging, and include lower oxygen availability, lower temperatures, and higher UV radiation, to name a few. However, mammals have been shown to adapt to some of these stressors.

The immune system is one of the most energetically expensive of life-history traits, costly to maintain and deploy. Therefore, high altitude environments may select for immune system adaptations that optimize energy allocation among competing life-history traits and reduce costs of activation, for example by selecting for immune tolerance rather than resistance to pathogens.

Working with Dr. Alexey Yanchucov and colleagues (Bülent Ecevit University, Turkey), we are investigating immune system adaptation to high altitude using Turkish blind mole-rats (Nannospalax xanthodon) and their parasites as a non-model system.

Host-pathogen transcriptomic associations in common buzzards

We are investigating how niche choice (nest location), niche construction (adding nest greenery), color morph impact ectoparasite and blood parasite load in common buzzard chicks. We are also looking for morph-specific transcriptomic responses to parasites, and how host and parasite transcriptomics associate with infection loads. This work is part of the Collaborative Research Center project Niche Choice, Niche Conformance, Niche Construction (NC3).

Bat Genetic Immunity and Rabies

Bats host high viral diversity and have been implicated as the origins of a number of highly pathogenic emerging infectious diseases of humans and domestic animals. Despite much speculation on how the bat immune system might differ from other mammals in ways that promote viral circulation, surprisingly little is known about the genetic basis of immunity in bats. This research, in collaboration with Daniel Streicker, will illuminate the relationship between an immune gene shared by all vertebrates and resistance to rabies virus, and increase our understanding of this relationship in a spatially explicit context across wild bat populations.