Why study spatial disease dynamics?

The dynamics of infectious diseases in real-world populations can be incredibly complex.  Studying disease transmission in wildlife is useful not only for conserving host species or mitigating spillover risk to humans, but also because wildlife diseases let us understand transmission dynamics among a broad array of host-pathogen lifestyles, leaving us better prepared to respond to emerging events.  Methods built on any system, be it human, agricultural, wildlife, or plant, improve our capacity to respond to emerging threats.

Our lab is committed to understanding the processes that drive the risks and consequences of consumer-resource dynamics in wildlife systems.  Our particular emphasis is on how environmental context and host life-history shape movement, social dynamics, contacts, and finally transmission or consumption.  We focus around free-ranging ungulate systems in the intermountain west as both model systems and systems of management interest unto themselves.