One of the top “unsolved problems” in biology is the need to untangle complex networks of species interactions - perhaps nowhere is this more consequential than our need to grapple with the socioecological risks of neglected tropical diseases. Human-livestock-wildlife parasite transmission has been declared a major biomedical challenge for the 21st century with reasons for concern that include the potential for zoonotic helminths—parasitic worms such as nematodes (roundworms), cestodes (tapeworms), and trematodes (flukes) to be transmitted between humans and animals. The effects cause malnutrition, developmental delays, and deaths that disproportionately affect communities undergoing rapid development.

A critical problem is that our strategies to identify and track wildlife parasites originated to combat livestock diseases a century ago. We know very little about how to answer the question: What parasites infect tropical wildlife? We know far more about the subset of parasites that harm humans and livestock than all others. Consequently, our conservation partners struggle to identify the parasites they encounter, hindering our collective efforts to rehabilitate endangered species, evaluate emerging health threats, and treat diseases.

Fortunately, we have just received a Catalyst award from the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society to pursue new strategies. Today, the gold-standard method for studying gastrointestinal helminth parasites in wildlife is rooted in taxonomy. Identifying parasites and evaluating their potential to harm hosts requires us to inspect adult parasites from dead hosts. Of course dead-but-well-preserved wildlife are hard to find, especially in the tropics. As a result, we often rely on less-suitable counts of parasite eggs in fecal samples, which can reveal parasites are present but often precludes identification or comparison across studies. This award will allow us to build on recent work at Brown University, which has brought us tantalizingly close to sparking a new era of genome-enabled parasitology that could overcome these intersecting challenges.

Together with an exciting array of partners - Sloth Conservation Foundation (Costa Rica), The Organization for Tropical Studies (Costa Rica), Fundación Zoológica de Cali (Colombia), and the Instituto de Biología Subtropical (Argentina) - we are embarking on an ambitious plan to document and DNA barcode parasites from tropical wildlife across the Americas.  We are also expanding our work at Brown, tapping into the expertise of tapping into the GeoSpatial expertise of Professor of the Practice Seda Şalap-Ayça and Data Scientist Tim Divoll to build more user-friendly and informative data portals. 

​We are grateful for the new support to build and share this important resource!

The magazine Medicine@Brown featured Montana Stone's award-winning photo of "Zorro" -- a culpeo fox -- taken at our long-term ecological research site in Fray Jorge National Park in Chile. It's a fantastic shot of an amazing, and poorly known predator. As the BioMed communications team said, this image from Montana's field work is a poignant way to remind people that our mission in the Division is to advance the "health of people AND planet." We always love to remind people that our health is intimately, and inextricably, linked to what's happening in nature and around the planet.

I am extremely excited to share a new job opportunity as a core member of our group: Lab Manager in Ecological Genomics at Brown. 

​This is such a unique career opportunity in our field. The position will be salaried, starting around $60,000, and it is expected to provide job security, stability, and community over the long term. There will also be opportunities for career growth as we work together to establish a new Ecological Genomics center via Brown’s Genomics Core Facility. You will be able to help shape the future of your own position.

From an insider's perspective, we very rarely see opportunities as good as this one. The formal job ad is pasted below.

Please feel free to distribute via your networks or social media to help ensure any potential candidates you know may apply.

The lab is incredibly excited to welcome Mary Burak! Mary is joining the lab as a Fulbright Scholar based in Kenya followed by an IBES Voss Postdoctoral Fellowship. Together these prestigious awards will support Mary for three years both in Kenya and at Brown. Mary will collaborate with a number of major NGOs as well as scholars at the University of Nairobi, the National Museums of Kenya, and Mpala Research Centre to address critical data needs for the conservation of large carnivores and herbivores across Kenya. 

Mary completed a PhD in Os Schmitz's lab at Yale University in 2023. She is a star and we are so keen to learn from her and collaborate with her over the next few years and beyond!

The lab has much to celebrate as we close out another semester, even despite the disruptions of COVID-19.

• Congratulations to Patrick Freeman for earning a Masters based on a thesis comparing ecological hypotheses about the distributions of plants and large herbivores in Kenya!
• Congratulations to incoming Voss postdoc Colin Donihue for publishing several high-impact papers, including one featured on the cover of PNAS (generating a buzz in the NY Times and elsewhere) and one in Nature Ecology and Evolution!
• Congratulations to Courtney Reed for winning a grant from the American Philosophical Society’s Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration & Field Research!
• Congratulations to seniors graduating with amazing research accomplishments: Amanda Lyons (Honors), Catherine Porter, and Violet Sackett!
• Congratulations to Amanda Lyons '20 for admission into Brown's 5th year Masters program to conduct research on diamondback terrapins in collaboration with governmental and non-profit partners, and with generous support from a Diamondback Terrapin Working Group Grant!
• Congratulations to Cate Porter '20 for admission into the University of Virginia's Environmental Science graduate program!
• Congratulations to Jen Guyton (Princeton PhD) for earning the cover of Nature Ecology and Evolution based on our work to understand and restore the ecosystems of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique!
• Congratulations to Ashley Bang '19 on her upcoming position in Lian Pin Koh's lab at the National University of Singapore!

Congratulations to Bianca Brown for a 2020 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship Honorable Mention!
Congratulations to Courtney Reed for a 2020 Animal Behavior Society Student Research Grant!

Last week, Amanda Lyons (left) and Bianca Brown (right) braved the rainy weather to kick off our terrapin field season. Diamondback terrapins are the only "critically imperiled" reptile in Rhode Island, and a major conservation priority for the state. Amanda and Bianca were joined by our collaborators from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and The Roger Williams Park Zoo. Our research goal is to understand how genetically interconnected are the remaining few terrapin populations in the state, and relatedness to populations from neighboring states. This research is supported in part by a 2019 Voss Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Environmental Science and Communication to Amanda Lyons. Congratulations Amanda, and thanks IBES for supporting this research. 

If only the weather had been better for setting up the study sites!