Photo: Plowright lab and collaborators from Bozeman Disease Ecology community

The Plowright Lab

Principal Investigator

Raina Plowright

Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Montana State University
Principal Investigator, Bat OneHealth

“How are new infectious agents transmitted from one species to another, a process we call spillover; could we predict or even prevent these events from happening in the first place?”

Manuel Ruiz Aravena

"Could we leverage the physiological and behavioral responses of organisms to their environment to stop pathogen spillover from wildlife to humans?”

Caylee Falvo

“What role does the reservoir host immune system play in spillover from wildlife to humans?"

Dan Crowley

"How do wildlife immune systems affect the risk of spillover across zoonotic viruses and reservoir species?"

Devin Jones

"What if we could predict patterns of wildlife disease by understanding how host-associated microbiomes respond to environmental change?"

Maureen Kessler

"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?

Troy Koser

"What if we could use climate and wildlife host data to predict where and when a disease outbreak will happen? What sort of wildlife management actions might we take given this knowledge?"

Trent Bushmaker

“Could we counteract pathogen spillover if we understand the route of transmission from wildlife to humans?”

Screen Shot 2025-06-04 at 12.33.09 PM.png

Amelia Graves

“How can we use hematology to understand bat health?”

Brooklin Hunt

“How is bat health related to spillover, and how can we develop our understanding of bat health?”

Dale Hansen

"What if dietary preferences can explain which bat species are more likely to shed viruses and that this information could be used to predict the location of spillover events?"