Team

Sebastian Stockmaier (PI): I am am and Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Research Associate. I am working at the intersection of disease and behavioral ecology. I am broadly interested in how pathogens affect host (social) behaviors and vice versa. I have been working on bats for more than 10 years now and use them as study systems to answer my questions: What are the social consequences of “behaving sick? How do pathogens change, or even manipulate host social behaviors? What animal-animal interactions lead to pathogen transmission? When I am not chasing bats through the jungle, I enjoy hiking, camping, football (the European kind), and spending time with our kids.

Keelee Pullum: I am broadly interested in how animals change their behaviors in response to sickness. More specifically, are these behaviors (“sickness behaviors”) adaptive, how are they modulated physiologically, and what trade-offs occur when an individual chooses to invest in recovery from sickness. I plan to investigate these questions in a population of free-living tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor). Google Scholar

Matt Andres: My research interests are broadly focused on how animals use chemical senses to gather information from their environment and how this sensory information influences behavior. I am particularly interested in the role of olfaction in social behavior and disease ecology. My primary interest lies in studying these phenomena in bats, especially Phyllostomids. I am focused on understanding how olfaction might serve as a mechanism for disease detection in vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus). To explore this, I plan to characterize odor profiles through chemical analysis and conduct behavioral experiments to investigate how vampire bats respond to different conspecific odors.

Bella Stevens: Broadly I am interested in the ecological factors that influence host response to infection, both behaviorally and physiologically. In the Common Vampire Bat (Desmodus rotundus), I aim to examine the effects of resource availability on host responses to infection. In Central and South America, vampire bats often feed on abundant livestock. I will conduct both experimental and field-based studies in order to explore how varying resource availability affects host immune response and behavior. In North American bats, I am interested in behavioral and immunological defenses to Pseudogymnoascus destructans in species with varying susceptibility to White-nose Syndrome. This would primarily involve field-based studies in the Southeastern US. 

Josh Kreis

Ellis Kelsey

Jess Hayes

Madison Padmore