Climate change is going to alter the range of many different species around the globe. These shifts will induce novel interactions across hosts, parasites, and environments that will result in significant changes to disease dynamics. My research leverages shrimp black gill disease (sBG) and other parasites and pathogens in fisheries systems to examine how climate change will alter host-parasite dynamics into the future.
Commercial shrimp are expanding their range up the Atlantic coast, so much so that the state of Virginia is producing a commercial harvest for the first time in its history.
sBG appears to be expanding its range along with them, however, the phenology of this disease is very different at the Southern end of the range compared to the North.
My research seeks to untangle three potential mechanisms behind this shifting phenology: genetic differences between populations of hosts and parasites, changes in the environmental context of this relationship, and differences in host population density.
Aquatic Disease Ecology in a Changing World 