Daniel has been awarded the prize for his article titled Macroimmunology: The drivers and consequences of spatial patterns in wildlife immune defense, which he was the lead author on.
The paper is particularly topical as it has relevance to the current pandemic. In the paper, Daniel and co-authors coin the term for an emerging field ‘macroimmunology’, where macroecological approaches (the study of relationships between organisms and their environment at large scales) are applied to ecoimmunology (the study of the causes and consequences of variation in immunity). The paper also provides new guidance for discovering patterns and identifying large-scale ecological drivers of variation in animal disease burden and immunity.
Lesley Lancaster, Senior Editor of Journal of Animal Ecology said: “The Novel Coronavirus pandemic has highlighted a need to document patterns and develop robust predictions for the spread of disease within and between wildlife and humans. Global-scale environmental changes such as climate change, urbanization, and habitat loss are predicted to affect the spread of both disease and responses in hosts and pathogens.
Additional coverage from IU Biology and Animal Ecology in Focus
