Emerging infectious diseases have caused the collapse of populations and extinction events in wildlife, presenting a serious challenge for biodiversity conservation. While the presence of free-living pathogen stages is recognized as an important attribute that can exacerbate disease impacts, many aspects of environmental pathogen reservoirs and transmission from the environment remain understudied or unknown. My research seeks to disentangle host and environmental sources of transmission and the rate of transmission within and among species. My work is primarily focused in an emerging fungal disease, white-nose syndrome, caused by the fungal pathogen, Pseudogymnoascus destructans.
Selected publications:
Hoyt, J.R., K.E. Langwig, J.P. White, H.M. Kaarakka, J. Redell, A. Kurta, J. DePue, W.H. Scullon, K.L. Parise, J.T. Foster, W.F. Frick, and A.M. Kilpatrick. 2018. Cryptic connections illuminate pathogen transmission within community networks. Nature. 563, 710–713
Hoyt, J.R., Langwig K.E., Sun K., Parise K.L., Wang Y., Huang X., Worledge L., Miller H., Görföl T., Boldogh S.A., Fukui D., Sakuyama M., Yachimori S., Sato A., Dalannast M., Jargalsaikhan A., Batbayar N., Yovel Y., Amichai E., Natradze I., Frick W.F., Foster J.T., Feng J. and Kilpatrick A.M. 2020. Environmental reservoir dynamics predict global infection patterns and population impacts for the fungal disease white-nose syndrome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 117(13)
Langwig, K.E., Frick W.F., Reynolds R., Parise K.L., Drees K.P., Hoyt J.R., Cheng T.L., Kunz, T.H, Foster J.T., and Kilpatrick, A.M. 2015. Host and pathogen ecology drive the seasonal dynamics of a fungal disease, white-nose syndrome. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 282 (1799) 20142335