James S. Adelman
Assistant Professor
About Dr. Adelman
No two organisms respond to infection in the same way—a phenomenon with far-reaching implications for infectious disease dynamics, ecology, and evolution. Nevertheless, variation in individual traits, including immune and behavioral responses to infection, has traditionally been studied separately from population-level aspects of epidemiology, such as disease prevalence and pathogen transmission. My research suggests that we cannot fully understand these individual- or population-level processes in isolation. I incorporate techniques from immunology, eco-physiology, and animal behavior to answer two main questions at the interface of physiology and ecology: 1) why, mechanistically and evolutionarily, do individuals vary in their immune and behavioral responses to infection? and 2) how does this variation shape pathogen transmission and evolution?
Education
B.S. Biology, Duke University; Ph.D. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University; Post-Doctoral Fellow Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech
Research Interests
- Disease Ecology
- Ecological Immunology and Physiology
- Animal Behavior