The paper titled, "Linking Lyme disease ecology and epidemiology: reservoir host identity, not richness, determines tick infection and human disease in California" was led by previous Briggs lab PhD alum, Dr. Andy MacDonald. An open access version of the paper can be found on Environmental Research Letters (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac9ece).

Her full dissertation can now be found on Google Scholar. 

The Shoreliners' Broida-Hirschfelder Graduate Fellowship program is administered by the UCSB Graduate Division, and two recipients are selected by a UCSB Shoreliners selection committee. The UCSB Faculty Women's Club Broida-Hirschfelder Fellowship was first awarded in 1992. It was endowed by Ina Broida and Betty Hirschfelder, both long-time active members of the UCSB Faculty Women's Club. 

The pair will work on the project titled, "Elucidating the roles of aquatic invertebrates in amphibian pathogen dynamics".

Titled, "Detection and isolation of Rickettsia tillamookensis (Rickettsiales: Rickettsiaceae) from Ixodes pacificus (Acari: Ixodidae) from multiple regions of California" is now out in the Journal of Medical Entomology https://doi.org/10.1093/jme/tjac038

Titled, "ABCDE: Amphibian Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis Causes Devastating Extinctions"

Titled, "Fieldwork: Collecting genetic samples to study disease dynamics between Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and Amphibians"

She will be looking at tick dynamics across restoration gradients in the backyard of UCSB at Coal Oil Point and North Campus Open Space.

Her previous quarter teaching Biometry remotely received glowing reviews and we're sure it will be the same this upcoming quarter!

Congrats!

The proposal titled "Direct and indirect impacts on tick-borne disease risk from historic fire events" will revisit 4 UC natural reserves that experienced fire in the fall of 2020. 

Great job!

Since 2018 

• Tatum gave an oral presentation titled "Can we predict chytrid outbreaks without touching frogs?: a Bayesian approach.". Co-authored with Wendy Meiring and Cherie Briggs.
• Kacie won best poster in the ESA Disease Ecology section titled "Lizard feeding enhances Ixodes pacificus vector competency to Borrelia burgdorferi" Co-authored with Lisa Couper, Anne Sapiro, Fauna Yarza, X. Frank Yang, Keith Clay, Chase Mateusiak, Seemay Chou, and Andrea Swei. 

The title of her work "From specialist to generalist: a community ecology approach to understanding the disease dynamics of the amphibian-killing pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis" was presented via poster during the 18th Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases Conference located at Infectious Diseases Research Institute of Montpellier, France.

Co-authors include Mark Wilber and Cherie Briggs

Kaylie Nguyen '22

Funded work is for field research on Mountain Yellow-legged frogs in the Eastern Sierras

The research project titled "Transmission dynamics of tick-borne pathogens across a latitudinal gradient" will take Sam to 11 UC Natural Reserves in 20201.

Highlighted in this article: https://ucnrs.org/2020-21-mathias-grant-recipients/

Their work is featured in the “Friends of Sedgwick” August 2019 newsletter (https://sedgwick.nrs.ucsb.edu/newsletters/friends-sedgwick-autumn-2019)

Kana Suzuki '21

Congrats on a milestone!

Cherie was recognized for her "distinguished contributions to the field of disease ecology".

News article highlighting Cherie can be found here: https://www.aaas.org/membership/member-spotlight/global-detective-cherie-briggs-work-helps-reveal-mysteries-disease

The paper titled "Widespread chytrid infection across frogs in the Peruvian Amazon suggests critical role for low elevation in pathogen spread and persistence" was featured in Michigan News (https://news.umich.edu/first-widespread-chytrid-fungus-infections-in-frogs-of-peruvian-amazon-rain-forests-reported/).

The article is linked here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0222718

Yanelyn Perez '20

congrats!

Mark Wilber successfully defended and is officially Doctor Mark Wilber!

Our newest grad, Tatum Katz, was awarded a 2017 Mellichamp Fellowship in Systems Biology and Bioengineering by the Mellichamp Chairs in Systems Biology and Bioengineering. Congratulations Tatum!

The Mountain yellow-legged frog is on the cover of the October issue of Methods in Ecology and Evolution. This issue features Mark and Cherie’s article on using Integral Projection Models for modeling host-parasite systems.

Roland was interviewed by UCSBs The Current

Cherie Briggs was elected Fellow of the Ecological Society of America. For more information, click here.

Congratulations to Mary and Nathan who received the Worster Award to conduct dual graduate/undergraduate research this summer. They will conduct an experiment at the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory that examines correlations between environmental factors of multiple lakes invaded by Bd, and the outcome of the Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog population in each lake (persistence or die-off).

Andy and Tom both received post-docs! Andy is going to be working with Erin Mordecai on malaria at Stanford University and Tom is going to be working with Brian Halstead on garter snakes in the Sierra Nevada. Congratulations guys!

Cherie was a member of a working group that published this report on how to manage the salamander chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans in the United States.

Andy and Cherie just published a paper titled Truncated seasonal activity patterns of the western blacklegged tick (Ixodes pacificus) in central and southern California looking at the “patterns of seasonal activity and density of host-seeking western blacklegged ticks” in Southern California. Check out the paper here.

Mark, Sara, and Cherie had their paper on methods for detecting parasite-induced host mortality from parasite intensity data accepted at the International Journal of Parasitology. You can check out an unofficial version of the paper here.

Cherie just published a paper in Science which defines a general consumer-resource model, applicable to most (if not all) known consumer-resource interactions. You can check out the article here. For a nice summary check out the press release here.

Briggs Lab undergraduates Jacob and An presented their research at the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities session. Jacob was looking the effects of invasive trout on insect body size distributions in Sierra Nevada Lakes and An was looking at predator avoidance in Pacific Tree Frogs. Congratulations you two!

Congratulations to Mark who advanced candidacy!

Tom completed his dissertation defense! He gave an excellent talk on his research examining the response of Sierra Nevada aquatic communities to Bd-induced extinction events of Mountain Yellow-legged Frogs. Congratulations Tom!

Andrea J. and Cherie’s paper examining the influence of Bd on amphibian microbial communities was just accepted and the Proceeding of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). Congrats!

Congratulations to Andrea who received the UCSB Shoreliners’ (Formerly Faculty Women’s Club) Broida-Hirschfelder Award by Shoreliners. She is pictured here receiving the award from UCSB Shoreliners’ president Claudia Chapman on October 3.

Emily, Mark, and Tom all gave successful and informative talks at the Ecological Society of America meeting. Click here for the full program. It was a great conference; full of ecology, networking and libations.

He will be working with first generation, low income, minority students planning to attend graduate school. See more about the program here.

The paper is titled “Lyme disease risk influences human settlement in the wildland-urban interface: evidence from a longitudinal analysis of counties in the northeastern United States”. In this paper, we show that human populations respond to Lyme disease risk through settlement decisions, and in so doing identify a statistical problem common in previous analyses exploring the link between habitat fragmentation and human Lyme disease incidence. Proofs are back, just waiting to see it in print at this point.

Cherie and Andrea J.’s preproposal on chytrid microbe interactions was accepted!