Professional summary
Sarah's research aims to understand the impacts of environmental change on parasite dynamics in wild animals.
She leads the ecological work packages of our UKRI funded, One Health interdisciplinary project in India IndiaZooRisk+ which uses OneHealth approaches to understand and co-develop interventions for zoonotic diseases affecting forest communities in India. This project aims to gain knowledge into how climate and land-use change impacts communities of vectors and wildlife hosts and alters human behaviour, thus altering disease dynamics and leading to human spillover. It involves strong engagement with affected forest communities, cross-sectoral policy makers and disease management practitioners, and is developing tools, providing policy guidance and frameworks for disease risk management.
Sarah also works in marine ecosystems where she investigates the impact of parasites (nematode worms) on the behaviour, fitness and population dynamics of marine top predators (seabirds). Through a NERC-funded project: A direct test of the impact of infection on animal migration: consequences for parasite and host populations, she and colleagues are trying to understand associations between migration, a critical life-history trait, and parasites. Using experimental approaches they are trying to understand how infection influences animal movements and in turn the consequences of animal movement for infection dynamics. Recently the team has also been investigating the impacts of highly pathogenic avian flu on seabird populations and Sarah is a work package leader in the NERC-funded project ECOFLU: Understanding the ecology of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in wild bird populations.