Bret D. Elderd

Area of Interest

My research focuses on examining how disease outbreaks, community structure, and stochasticity influence population dynamics by combining field-based experimental and theoretical modeling approaches. I'm particularly interested in:

• Virus transmission and insect outbreaks
• Variability in disease transmission
• Disturbance and riparian community structure
• Population viability and rare species management

If you're interested in joining my research group, please email me. I'm seeking both students and post-docs to work on projects involving either population or community ecology. In particular, I take a quantitative approach to ecological questions and would require that my students have some interest or training in mathematical ecology/modeling. While students may work on projects closely affiliated with my research, I encourage them to seek out their own research identity.

Selected Publications

complete list of publications

• Richards, R. L., B. D. Elderd, and M. A. Duffy (2023). Unhealthy herds and the predator-spreader: Understanding when predation increases disease incidence and prevalence. Ecology and Evolution 13, e9918.
• Van Allen, B. G., F. P. Dillemuth, V. Dukic, and B. D. Elderd (2023). Viral transmission and infection prevalence in a cannibalistic host-pathogen system. Oecologia 201, 499–511.
• Elderd, B. D., N. Mideo, and M. A. Duffy (2022). Looking across scales in disease ecology and evolution. The American Naturalist 199, 51–58.
• Foster, G., B. D. Elderd, R. L. Richards, and T. Dallas (2022). Estimating R0 from early exponential growth: Parallels between 1918 influenza and 2020 SARS-CoV-2 pandemics. PNAS Nexus 1(4).
• Shaffery, P., B. D. Elderd, and V. Dukic (2020). A note on species richness and the variance of epidemic severity. Journal of Mathematical Biology 80, 2055–2074.
• Acevedo, M. A., F. P. Dillemuth, M. Faldyn, A. Flick, and B. D. Elderd (2019). Virulence- driven trade-offs in disease transmission: A meta-analysis. Evolution 73, 636–647.
• Elderd, B. D. (2019). Bottom-up trait-mediated indirect effects decrease pathogen transmission in a tritrophic system. Ecology 100, e02551.
• Faldyn, M. J., M. D. Hunter, and B. D. Elderd (2018). Climate change and an invasive, tropical milkweed: An ecological trap for monarch butterflies. Ecology 99, 1031–1038.