SYMP 4 - Crossing the Taxonomic Divide in Disease Ecology

Tuesday, August 13, 2019: 8:00 AM-11:30 AM
Ballroom E, Kentucky International Convention Center
Organizer:
Clay Cressler
Co-organizer:
A. I. Bento
Moderator:
Clay Cressler
Disease ecologists tend to approach questions about the ecology and evolution of infectious disease from either an animal-centric perspective or a plant-centric perspective. This siloing of the field has the unfortunate consequence that researchers in one subfield often pursue questions that are new to that subfield, but old in the other subfield. For example, tolerance as a strategy for dealing with infectious disease has been a hot topic among animal disease ecologists in the last 10 years, with several very high profile demonstrations of tolerance. But tolerance to infection has a long history in plant disease ecology going back to the 1950s. The lack of cross-talk between subfields has led animal disease ecologists to redefine tolerance, and to measure it in ways that had already been discussed and discarded by plant disease ecologists. Similar stories can be told for other conceptual questions, such as how parasite virulence evolves in response to ecological factors (old in the animal literature) and how ecology and phylogeny interact to shape parasite host range (old in the plant literature). More generally, there are important research areas that are shared between the two subfields, such that improved cross-talk would benefit both. For example, both plant and animal disease ecologists are increasingly concerned about how climate change could alter patterns of disease, and about how individual variability in hosts affects disease spread. The objective of this session is to identify those conceptual areas where cross-talk and collaboration between plant and animal disease ecologists would be most fruitful. To achieve that objective, this symposium will bring together a diverse set of disease ecologists who have worked in both plant and animal systems to answer the question, “What do plant disease ecologists know that every animal disease ecologist should know, and vice versa?” The talks will include diverse perspectives on this question, from postdocs and junior faculty to senior faculty. Each presentation will use specific examples in plant or animal disease system to motivate general questions that span plant and animal systems, and each speaker will provide their unique take on how they have gained a broader perspective on the big questions in disease ecology by crossing between plant and animal systems.
8:00 AM
Re-inventing the wheel: Disease ecology across systems
Jessie Abbate, Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD)
9:00 AM
Pathogen life histories in plants and animals
Ian F. Miller, Princeton University, Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory; C. Jessica E. Metcalf, Princeton University
9:30 AM
9:40 AM
Plant virus ecology at multiple scales: Interactions among landscapes, hosts, and vectors
Alison G. Power, Cornell University; Jasmine S. Peters, Cornell University; Laura E. Jones, Cornell University
10:10 AM
11:10 AM
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