Academic Staff & Independent Research Fellows

Dr Amy Pedersen

Tel No: +44 (0)114 222 4692
Fax No: +44 (0)114 222 0002

Career

BS, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. (1995)
PhD, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA (2005)
NSF post-doctoral research associate, University of Virginia (2005)
Post-doctoral research associate, University of Georgia, Athens, GA (2005-2006)
Royal Society Incoming Research Fellow, University of Sheffield (2006-present)

Key Research Interests

My research is focused on understanding the role of parasites in wild host populations. In natural systems, individuals are often co-infected by a number of different parasites, and recent work has suggested that most parasites can infect several host species. However much of the research in disease ecology and evolution focuses on a one host – one parasite framework. My research goal is to expand this framework (1) to evaluate the interactions that occur between co-infecting parasites within a host and their consequences for host health and (2) to expand our knowledge of multi-host parasites, in particular to test the factors that facilitate disease emergence. To address these aims, I use a variety of systems and approaches including field-based manipulations, laboratory experiments, theory and comparative analyses.

Current key questions include:

Effects of periodic resource pulses on host-parasite systems: focusing on the role of acorn mast events on Peromyscus population dynamics and intestinal parasite community structure.
Co-infection and within-host parasite interactions: focusing on developing models and tools to understand and quantify interactions between parasites within a host.
The ecological and evolutionary factors that drive disease emergence: focusing on developing theory and an empirical insect-virus lab-based system to understand the ecological and evolutionary factors that facilitate disease emergence and sustainability in a new host.
The determinants of host specificity: using large-scale mammal parasite databases and host phylogenies to understand what factors determine host range and parasite sharing in wild primates.

Principal Collaborators

Dr Andy Fenton, University of Liverpool
Dr Jonathan Davies, NCEAS (National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis)
Prof Mike Boots, University of Sheffield
Dr Michael Hood, Amherst College
Prof Janis Antonovics, University of Virginia
The Global Mammal Parasite Database Group: www.mammalparasites.org

Publications (2001 to date)

Davies, T.J. & Pedersen, A.B. Predicting infectious disease in primates and emergence in humans. (In review).

Pedersen, A.B., Jones, K.E., Nunn, C.L. and Altizer, S.A. Infectious disease and mammalian extinction risk. (In review).

Clotfelter, E., Pedersen, A.B., Ketterson, E., Nolan, V., Ram, N. and Cranford, J.C. Acorns, rodents, and birds: Weather affects multiple trophic levels in an oak dominated forest. (In review).

Altizer, S. and Pedersen, A.B. 2007. Evolutionary dynamics of infectious disease and threats to biodiversity. In: Carroll, S. and Fox, C. (eds) Conservation Biology: Evolution in Action. (In review).

Pedersen, A.B. & Fenton, A. 2007. Emphasizing the ecology in parasite community ecology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 22:133-139.

Fenton, A. and Pedersen, A.B. 2005. Community epidemiology in theory and practice: A conceptual framework for describing transmission dynamics in multiple hosts. Emerging Infectious Disease 11:1815-1821.

Pedersen, A.B., Altizer, Poss, M., Cunningham, A.A, and S., Nunn, C.L. 2005. Patterns of host specificity and transmission among parasites of wild primates. International Journal of Parasitology 35: 647-657.

Altizer, S. A., Nunn, C.L. ,Thrall, P.H., Gittleman, J.L., Antonovics, J., Cunningham, A.A., Dobson, A.P., Ezenwa, V., Jones, K.E., Pedersen, A.B., Poss, M. and Pulliam, J.R.C. 2003. Social organization and disease risk in mammals: integrating theory and empirical studies. Annual Reviews in Ecology and Systematics 34:517-547.

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