The talk was entitled, “Do small mammals ‘compete’ for ticks?”.

I made the argument, based on some simple analyses of tick burden data from an experiment in 2011 (!), that when, say, chipmunks are added to a fragment, they reduce the number of larvae feeding on mice by a small number, but that number is sufficient to offset the number fed by the chipmunk. In other words, adding chipmunks (or likely other species) would be expected to reduce the overall density of infected nymphs the next year. The slides are below. Now just need to write the dang paper!

Coolest part: my college ecology professor, the one who made me want to become an ecologist, was in the audience! Thanks, for coming and saying such nice things Mark!

ESA2017_Burdens

Bailey Towey is working with Mitch Le Sage (MS) on invertebrate scavengers of salamander larvae. She will be estimating the “functional response”—the rate at which scavengers consume amphibian carcasses as carcass density increases—in local ponds and in the lab. This work nicely complements Mitch’s work on scavengers and ranavirus transmission. Glad you’re joining the lab, Bailey!

I’m part of a DoD SERDP grant with Rick Ostfeld (lead) and others. This includes funding for a PhD student to work on tick-host encounters and related questions about how tick ecology is influenced by climate change. See Prospective Students page for a bit more detail.

With the growing interest in ranaviruses, Matt Gray and the GRC are offering an online class on ranavirus biology Feb-April 2016. You can find more information and register here. I will be teaching several days of the class, so it will be amazing for sure…

Thanks to Jason Hoverman for hosting me and for everyone else who showed me around, taught me interesting things, and generally made fro a great visit!

Title: “How are they not all dead?” The importance of heterogeneity in the ranavirus-amphibian system