Andrew Read

Research Summary

Ecology and evolution of infectious disease. We exploit modern notions of adaptive evolution to attack biomedically and theoretically challenging phenomena like virulence and infectiousness, adaptation to new hosts, vaccine escape, and drug and insecticide resistance. Our work involves evolutionary biology, ecology, parasitology, microbiology, genetics, and immunology. Currently, much of the work concerns the three players that cause malaria (the parasite, the vertebrate host, and the mosquito), as well entomopathogenic fungi and Marek’s disease of chickens. In the past, we also have worked on the parasites of Daphnia, African trypanosomes, and parasitic nematodes of mammals.