Student Travel Grants deadline extended!
The new deadline for these awards is September 11. More information available here.
The RCN heads to ESA 2015
The Macroecology of Infectious Disease RCN will be hosting an organized oral session, with some great talks. Also, if you’re inclined, check out the newly formed Disease Ecology Section of ESA. They will be having a mixer at ESA. Their webmaster is also pretty legit.
Fourth RCN meeting scheduled
The fourth meeting of the RCN will take place in Athens GA just before the 13th annual Ecology and Evolution of Infectious disease conference, also here in Athens. We will be meeting for full days on May 24th and May 25th, with a half day meeting on May 26.
Understanding parasite community structure
Different host species and individuals are inhabited by different communities of parasites. One of the central goals of the RCN is to determine the factors shaping parasite richness and diversity among hosts. This involves the application of tools from community ecology, and the development of new tools to analyze parasite communities.
Third meeting scheduled!
The third biannual meeting of the “Macroecology of Infectious Disease RCN” will take place from Monday November 3 through Wednesday November 5 in Athens, Georgia. It will consist of two full days and one half day of sessions.
Lesions on coral due to bacterial infection
Disease can affect not only individuals or species but whole ecosystems. This picture shows lesions on reef coral caused by bacterial infections.
Mammals under threat due to infectious disease
Mammals under threat due to infectious disease. Infectious disease seems to be a much more important factor in driving extinction risk in carnivores and ungulates than other mammal groups. The conditions under which disease can elevate extinction risk remain poorly understood Courtesy: C. Nunn
Threat status and parasite species richness in primate
Threat status and parasite species richness in primates. Threatened primate species seem to harbor significantly fewer parasite species than more common species. Courtesy C. Nunn.
Taenia saginata, the beef tapeworm
Taenia saginata, the beef tapeworm, a parasite of both cattle and humans. One of the major goals of the RCN is to understand what biological and ecological factors make host species more or less likely to share susceptibility to infection by a given parasite or disease.
A map of undiscovered primate parasite diversity
Predicted prevalence of unknown parasite diversity in primates based on sampling effort and primate diversity. Courtesy: C. Nunn.
Participants in the first RCN meeting
Participants in the inaugural meeting of the RCN, October 1013 in Athens Ga. Right to left, top row: Patrick R. Stephens, Jonathan T. Davies, David Onstad, John Drake, Robert Poulin, Andrew Park, Rebecca A. Hutchinson, Gonazalo M. Vazquez-Prokopec, Jeb Byers, Rob Critchlow, James Brown, Charles L. Nunn. Bottom row: Sonia Altizer, Pieter Johnson, Molly Fisher, Shan Huang, Katherine Smith, Vanessa Ezenwa.
NSF Research Coordination Network: Macroecology of Infectious Disease
An ecological network depicting the pattern of shared parasites by primates species. Each node represents a primate species. The links among nodes depict shared parasites (i.e., two nodes are linked whenever they share a parasite species). Primates in the center of the network share more infectious diseases with humans. From: Gómez, J. M., Nunn, C. L., & Verdú, M. (2013). Centrality in primate–parasite networks reveals the potential for the transmission of emerging infectious diseases to humans. Proceedings of the National…