the Hite Lab of Evolutionary Epidemiology

UW-Madison

*Image design: Raquel Santamaria Germani, Carleton College*

By gaining deeper insight into the myriad ways in which pathogens adapt to their environments we try to predict how interventions will affect the ability of pathogens to adapt, compete with other microbes, and transmit to new hosts to develop more sustainable solutions to prevent the evolution of harmful pathogens.

Current research themes:

I. Socio-ecological effects on pathogen dynamics.

II. Eco-evolutionary effects on pathogen dynamics.

III. Forecasting pathogen dynamics.

In reality, these themes are not separate but rather integrated and overlapping, creating bidirectional and cross-scale feedbacks (SO-ECO-EVO). This complexity can obscure the ultimate and proximate drivers of patterns, making it difficult to design effective, efficient, and scalable solutions. Part of our goal is to identify the relative contributions of each of these drivers using a systems-based and quantitative approach.

So-eco-EVO effects on pathogen dynamics

How does the use of antimicrobials in Salmon farms and the ‘spill-over’ of drug resistance impact wild fish populations? How are these interactions shaped by land-use change and climate forcing? To address these questions, this project combines field sampling, next-generation sequencing, geo-spatial, statistical, and climate modeling. This work is supported by the NSF and spans a gradient across Vancouver Island (one of my favorite places ever).

Thanks to a new partnership with the Global Health Institute, we are investigating the impacts of hydroclimatic changes on the social-ecological processes that drive disease transmission. This work combines field sampling, improved diagnostics, next-generation sequencing, and the development of new theory (in collaboration with Dr. André deRoos, University of Amsterdam)

This project spans an urban-rural gradient in the Colombian Amazon.

Manure application distributes antimicrobials and antimicrobial-resistant pathogens, potentially contaminating waterways, wildlife, and crops destined to be consumed by livestock or humans.

We are using the power of microbial ecology and next-generation sequencing, combined with statistical and epidemiological models, to harness soil management as a powerful weapon for combating antimicrobial resistance.

This project is funded by the USDA

birds, fish, copepods, & worms (…+ Land use & cLIMATE fORCING!)

Spatio-temporal variation: some things, some places, all at different times (as opposed to everything, everywhere, all at once).

The uneven distribution of parasites across hosts and landscapes is a common but poorly understood pattern that poses a considerable barrier to accurately predicting and managing diseases. This is in part because transmission is shaped by a complex interplay of ecological, behavioral, and immunological factors and our understanding of how these factors interact and their relative impacts across scales remains fragmentary. These gaps in knowledge are particularly acute for parasites with complex life cycles. The goal of this project is to develop a general framework, informed by empirical data, for understanding and predicting how these different processes operate within multiple hosts and shape parasite transmission and distribution across space and time.

Thanks to recent funding from the NSF and collaborators, Amanda Hund, Dan Bolnick, and Sebastian Schreiber, we will be integrating lab and field data (across Vancouver Island) with mathematical models to explore multiple drivers of spatio-temporal variation in transmission dynamics in parasites with complex life cycles. We will use a model host-parasite system as a case study to gain mechanistic insight into helminth parasites more broadly.