Representation Matters: One Approach to Centering Diversity in Science Classes | Speaker Series

While some disciplines lend themselves to a focus on DEI issues via the content of the courses themselves, math and science courses historically do not. As we all work to make our classrooms more inclusive and accessible, we can benefit from observing and discussing approaches others have taken. Please join us for a discussion of one approach to centering DEI efforts in a STEM field and stay for a mini-conference that has emerged from this work

Creativity in Teaching - Engaging Students | Brownbag Series

Bring your lunch and learn from your colleagues! Brownbag lunch presentations will be held four times this semester with different faculty members presenting topics that may be helpful to you

Pathogen spillover during land conversion

Pathogen spillover from wildlife to domestic animals and humans, and the reverse, has caused significant epidemics and pandemics worldwide. Although pathogen emergence has been linked to anthropogenic land conversion, a general framework to disentangle underlying processes is lacking. We develop a multi-host model for pathogen transmission between species inhabiting intact and converted habitat. Interspecies contacts and host populations vary with the proportion of land converted; enabling us to quantify infection risk across a changing landscape. In a range of scenarios, the highest spillover risk occurs at intermediate levels of habitat loss, whereas the largest, but rarest, epidemics occur at extremes of land conversion. This framework provides insights into the mechanisms driving disease emergence and spillover during land conversion. The finding that the risk of spillover is highest at intermediate levels of habitat loss provides important guidance for conservation and public health policy

A communal catalogue reveals Earth’s multiscale microbial diversity

Our growing awareness of the microbial world’s importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth’s microbial diversity

A communal catalogue reveals Earth's multiscale microbial diversity

Our growing awareness of the microbial world's importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth's microbial diversity.Peer reviewe

Urban Culling in Wildlife through a Social Justice Lens

Expanding on her research examining the relationship between race, racism, and wildlife population dynamics, her talk will look to inequalities in wealth across the St. Louis metropolitan area to examine disparities in host and parasite population dynamics. She\u27ll focus on ongoing research led by a small team of undergraduates in the biology program and their current findings

Signatures of natural and unnatural selection: evidence from an immune system gene in African buffalo

Pathogens often have negative effects on wildlife populations, and disease management strategies are important for mitigating opportunities for pathogen transmission. Bovine tuberculosis (Mycobacterium bovis; BTB) is widespread among African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) populations in southern Africa, and strategies for managing this disease vary. In two high profile parks, Kruger National Park (KNP) and Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park (HIP), BTB is either not actively managed (KNP) or managed using a test-and-cull program (HIP). Exploiting this variation in management tactics, we investigated potential evolutionary consequences of BTB and BTB management on buffalo by examining genetic diversity at IFNG, a locus which codes for interferon gamma, a signaling molecule vital in the immune response to BTB. Both heterozygosity and allelic richness were significantly and positively correlated with chromosomal distance from IFNG in KNP, suggesting that directional selection is acting on IFNG among buffalo in this park. While we did not see the same reduction in genetic variation around IFNG in HIP, we found evidence of a recent bottleneck, which might have eroded this signature due to genome-wide reductions in diversity. In KNP, alleles at IFNG were in significant gametic disequilibrium at both short and long chromosomal distances, but no statistically significant gametic disequilibrium was associated with IFNG in HIP. When, we compared genetic diversity between culled and non-culled subsets of HIP animals, we also found that individuals in the culled group had more rare alleles than those in the non-culled group, and that these rare alleles occurred at higher frequency. The observed excess of rare alleles in culled buffalo and the patterns of gametic disequilibrium in HIP suggest that management may be eroding immunogenetic diversity, disrupting haplotype associations in this population. Taken together, our results suggest that both infectious diseases and disease management strategies can influence host genetic diversity with important evolutionary consequences.Keywords: Genetic diversity, IFNG, Bovine tuberculosis, Syncerus caffer, Gametic disequilibrium, Disease management, Parasite-mediated selectio

JollesAnnaVetMedSignaturesNaturalUnnatural.pdf

Pathogens often have negative effects on wildlife populations, and disease management strategies are important for mitigating opportunities for pathogen transmission. Bovine tuberculosis (Mycobacterium bovis; BTB) is widespread among African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) populations in southern Africa, and strategies for managing this disease vary. In two high profile parks, Kruger National Park (KNP) and Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park (HIP), BTB is either not actively managed (KNP) or managed using a test-and-cull program (HIP). Exploiting this variation in management tactics, we investigated potential evolutionary consequences of BTB and BTB management on buffalo by examining genetic diversity at IFNG, a locus which codes for interferon gamma, a signaling molecule vital in the immune response to BTB. Both heterozygosity and allelic richness were significantly and positively correlated with chromosomal distance from IFNG in KNP, suggesting that directional selection is acting on IFNG among buffalo in this park. While we did not see the same reduction in genetic variation around IFNG in HIP, we found evidence of a recent bottleneck, which might have eroded this signature due to genome-wide reductions in diversity. In KNP, alleles at IFNG were in significant gametic disequilibrium at both short and long chromosomal distances, but no statistically significant gametic disequilibrium was associated with IFNG in HIP. When, we compared genetic diversity between culled and non-culled subsets of HIP animals, we also found that individuals in the culled group had more rare alleles than those in the non-culled group, and that these rare alleles occurred at higher frequency. The observed excess of rare alleles in culled buffalo and the patterns of gametic disequilibrium in HIP suggest that management may be eroding immunogenetic diversity, disrupting haplotype associations in this population. Taken together, our results suggest that both infectious diseases and disease management strategies can influence host genetic diversity with important evolutionary consequences.Keywords: Syncerus caffer, Parasite-mediated selection, Disease management, IFNG, Bovine tuberculosis, Gametic disequilibrium, Genetic diversit

JollesAnnaVetMedSignaturesNaturalUnnatural_TableS2.pdf

Pathogens often have negative effects on wildlife populations, and disease management strategies are important for mitigating opportunities for pathogen transmission. Bovine tuberculosis (Mycobacterium bovis; BTB) is widespread among African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) populations in southern Africa, and strategies for managing this disease vary. In two high profile parks, Kruger National Park (KNP) and Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park (HIP), BTB is either not actively managed (KNP) or managed using a test-and-cull program (HIP). Exploiting this variation in management tactics, we investigated potential evolutionary consequences of BTB and BTB management on buffalo by examining genetic diversity at IFNG, a locus which codes for interferon gamma, a signaling molecule vital in the immune response to BTB. Both heterozygosity and allelic richness were significantly and positively correlated with chromosomal distance from IFNG in KNP, suggesting that directional selection is acting on IFNG among buffalo in this park. While we did not see the same reduction in genetic variation around IFNG in HIP, we found evidence of a recent bottleneck, which might have eroded this signature due to genome-wide reductions in diversity. In KNP, alleles at IFNG were in significant gametic disequilibrium at both short and long chromosomal distances, but no statistically significant gametic disequilibrium was associated with IFNG in HIP. When, we compared genetic diversity between culled and non-culled subsets of HIP animals, we also found that individuals in the culled group had more rare alleles than those in the non-culled group, and that these rare alleles occurred at higher frequency. The observed excess of rare alleles in culled buffalo and the patterns of gametic disequilibrium in HIP suggest that management may be eroding immunogenetic diversity, disrupting haplotype associations in this population. Taken together, our results suggest that both infectious diseases and disease management strategies can influence host genetic diversity with important evolutionary consequences.Keywords: Gametic disequilibrium, Bovine tuberculosis, Disease management, IFNG, Genetic diversity, Parasite-mediated selection, Syncerus caffe