Ecological studies are the bridge that link biodiversity and global change issues. Please
join us at the first Fall 2009 lecture in the Harvard University Center for the
Environment and Bank of America series on
Biodiversity, Ecology, and Global Change
"Population Dynamics in Epidemic Malaria: Climate Forcing and Parasite
Evolution"
Mercedes Pascual
Rosemary Grant Collegiate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of
Michigan
Monday, April 12
5:00 pm
Harvard University
Sherman Fairchild Lecture Hall
7 Divinity Ave
Cambridge, MA
Infectious diseases at the population level are essentially a consumer-resource system, in
which immunity plays a central role by determining which hosts are a resource for
infection. Remarkable progress has been made in our understanding of the population
dynamics of childhood infections such as measles that confer full immunity and do not
exhibit (antigenic) diversity of the pathogen. This progress does not translate easily,
however, to the many infectious diseases for which these properties do not apply. The
waning patterns of immunity and complex patterns of parasite diversity in diseases like
malaria raise many questions on population dynamics and parasite evolution. In the first
part of the talk, Pascual will address questions on the role of climate forcing in the
population dynamics of epidemic malaria in regions at the edge of the spatial distribution
of the disease, such as highland and desert fringes, where temperature and rainfall limit
transmission. In the second part of the talk, she presents theoretical results on the
parasite's evolutionary strategies related to evasion of the immune system.
Mercedes Pascual received her Ph.D degree in 1995 from the Joint Program of the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was awarded a
U.S. Department of Energy Alexander Hollaender Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship for
studies at Princeton, and more recently, a Centennial Fellowship in Global and Complex
Systems from the James S. McDonnell Foundation. She is currently affiliated with the
Center for the Study of Complex Systems at University of Michigan and with the Santa Fe
Institute as an external faculty.
The Biodiversity, Ecology, and Global Change lecture series is sponsored by the Harvard
University Center for the Environment with generous support from Bank of America. This
lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow in the Sherman Fairchild
lobby.
Contact:
Lisa Matthews
Events Coordinator
Harvard University Center for the Environment
24 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
lisa_matthews(a)harvard.edu
p 617-495-8883
f 617-496-0425
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