Maureen Kessler, PhD Student

"How do changing resource landscapes influence spillover from wildlife reservoirs to humans and other animals? Which behavioral and physiological responses of reservoir hosts are the critical drivers of spillover?”

I am trying to tease apart the role of flying fox diet in Hendra virus spillover. I use fecal metabarcoding to investigate whether diet is associated with poor nutrition and increased viral excretion from flying foxes. Nutritional stress driven by diet changes may increase viral shedding some years, and more infectious bats foraging on the landscape increases spillover rates. High spillover rates in some years might also result from changes in foraging behavior that increase contact between bats and horses. To investigate this, I also uses GPS data loggers to understand how diet foods change flying fox foraging patterns in native forest and in human landscapes, particularly horse paddocks.  

Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar, 2018
Research: Foraging behavior of flying foxes
Western Sydney University, Australia
Griffith University, Australia

Master of Science, 2015
Research: Tick and mosquito vector ecology
Molecular Microbiology and Immunology
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Maryland

Bachelor of Science, 2013
Research: Virus-host interactions in algal biofuel
Biology, Chemistry 
New Mexico Tech, New Mexico