Highlight
Trainee Erin Landguth obtains Ph.D. in the Individualized Interdisciplinary Program (IIP) at the University of Montana.
Achievement/Results
The Individualized Interdisciplinary Program (IIP) allows students to work with faculty in the design of a graduate curriculum tailored to their unique academic, creative, and professional needs. The principal goal of the National Science Foundation’s IGERT: Montana – Ecology of Infectious Diseases (MEID) program is to produce graduates with expertise to lead the collaborative, cross-, and inter-disciplinary efforts in education and research needed to address complex problems as exemplified by the ecology of endemic, epidemic, and emergent infectious diseases.
Under the envelope of these two programs, Erin Landguth developed and fulfilled a Ph.D. program in which she obtained a truly interdisciplinary education and performed research at the interface of applied mathematics and computational ecology. She developed a novel spatial modeling approach to advance research in the areas of disease ecology and landscape ecology. Mathematical and computational modeling are powerful tools for evaluating relationships between mechanisms and responses in a spatially complex environment. However, past progress in these fields was limited by the lack of computational power and flexible mathematical models to simulate the actions of ecosystem and population processes in complex settings. Erin’s thesis research focused on the development of mathematical and computational models to synthesize environmental data for describing and predicting the characteristics of population and disease dynamics on a landscape.
The results from this research produced thesis chapters focusing on:
- Mathematical Disease Ecology using numerical and qualitative analysis to study a model for Tick Borne Relapsing Fever (TBRF) in an island ecosystem.
- Computational Landscape Ecology that required the development and application of a spatially-explicit computer model to predict population connectivity and gene flow on complex landscapes.
The MEID-IGERT program requires meaningful interaction between students and mentors from different scientific cultures and disciplines to enhance understanding of complex problems related to ecology of infectious diseases. To achieve the degree of integration and skill required by this training program, a curriculum was developed in conjunction with her Ph.D. committee. In her training Erin acquired the following set of skills and accomplishments as set of competencies necessary to execute the research problems and prepare her for a scientific career.
- Interdisciplinary training in mathematics, computation, and ecology.
- Advisors from mathematics, computation, and ecology to supervise research.
- Preliminary examination in Applied Mathematics.
- Comprehensive examination, developed by the committee, to illustrate interdisciplinary problem solving from areas of mathematics, computation, and ecology.
- Team-development and teaching: Erin co-developed and co-taught (with another Trainee) a course titled “Spatial Epidemiology Applications in GIS” and also I co-instructed an NCEAS Distributed Graduate Seminar series titled “Landscape Genetics” that was offered at 8 Universities worldwide.
- Competitive grant writing to NSF EASPI program.
- A co-authored dissertation chapter that documents the cross- and inter-disciplinary nature of her research. This TBRF research topic is also the focus of another ongoing Trainee project by Tammi Johnson being conducted with the NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, MT. Tammi is working with NIAID personnel to collect field data for parametrization of the model developed by Erin. This parametrization will represent a portion of Ms. Johnson’s thesis, one chapter of which will include Erin as co-author.
- An internship at U.C.- Davis.
- International research experience: NSF EASPI, University of Auckland.
Peer-reviewed published journal articles:
Landguth EL, Hand BK, Glassy J (2010) UNICOR: a species corridor, connectivity, and colonization network simulator. Global Change Biology, in preparation.
Landguth EL, Hand BK, Glassy J, Jacobi M (2010) CDPOP v1.0: a modular-based, spatially-explicit, landscape connectivity program. Ecography, in preparation.
Landguth EL, Johnson T, Stone, E (2010) Modeling temporally-forced disease dynamics in a host-vector community. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, in preparation.
Cushman SA, Landguth EL (2010) Effects of sample size, number of markers, and allelic richness on landscape genetic inference. Molecular Ecology, submitted.
Landguth EL, Cushman SA (2010) Effects of sample size, number of markers, and allelic richness on landscape genetic inference. Molecular Ecology, submitted.
Landguth EL, Cushman SA, Schwartz MK, Murphy M, McKelvey KS, Luikart G (2010) Quantifying the lag time to detect barriers in landscape genetics. Molecular Ecology, in press.
Short Bull R, Cushman SA, Mace R, Chilton T, Kendall K, Landguth EL, Schwartz MK, McKelvey K, Allendorf FW, Luikart G (2010) Why replication is important in landscape genetics: case of the American black bear in the Rocky Mountains. Molecular Ecology, submitted.
Landguth EL, Cushman SA, Murphy M, Luikart G (2010) Relationships between migration rates and landscape resistance assessed using individual-based simulations. Molecular Ecology Resources, in press.
Cushman SA, Landguth EL (2010) Spurious correlations and inferences in landscape genetics. Molecular Ecology, in press.
Cushman SA, Landguth EL (2010) Scaling landscape genetics. Landscape Ecology, in press.
Landguth EL, Cushman SA (2010) CDPOP: a spatially-explicit cost distance population genetics program. Molecular Ecology Resources, 10, 156-161.
Address Goals
Erin Landguth’s activities exemplify the cross-cutting nature of research and education in the ecology of infectious diseases. Erin was highly productive during her IGERT career and in addition to her Ph.D thesis has produced a suite of 7 lead-author publications 3 co-authored publications (some in press, some in process). Erin’s accomplishments will help advance research in landscape ecology in general and disease ecology in particular.
