DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Intestinal Parasites, Acorn Masts, and Population Dynamics of Peromyscus

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Infectious disease may substantially impact the health and stability of natural animal populations. White-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) and deer mouse (P. maniculatus) populations have been found to fluctuate due to peaks in food availability from oak acorn masts. It is likely that intestinal pathogens identified in Peromyscus contribute substantially to population crashes. The goal of this project is to understand how infectious disease can cause animal populations to crash or cycle throughout time. Long-term data on demography and infection will be used to quantify the effect of disease on individual survival and fecundity. In addition, experimental field manipulations will demonstrate the causative effects and interactions of disease and food on population dynamics of Peromyscus. The proposed experiments will help determine how infectious disease impacts natural animal populations. This work is important because for most animal-born disease outbreaks that infect humans we know little about what factors in the animal's ecology drive disease outbreaks. In addition, the general relationship between disease incidence and population abundance has important implications for the emergence of new pathogens in human and animal populations. Finally, this work will help resolve the critical ecological factors that drive disease in natural populations and threaten the survival of animal populations threatened by disease.