Sarah McGrath-Blaser

I am a PhD student at the University of Florida researching amphibian diseases and am specifically interested in modes of pathogen transmission. Amphibians are under a multitude of threats, compounded by emerging infectious diseases, including those caused by the notorious chytrid fungi. I aim to use experiments in microbial ecology to understand mechanisms of transmission at the macro scale. My current research is focused in the southern Appalachian Mountain range in North America on native salamanders. However, for my masters research at James Madison University, I worked on understanding the role of vertical versus environmental transmission on the tadpole skin microbiome of foam-nest breeding frogs in Borneo. Taking the knowledge I gained from working on modes of microbial transmission in a tropical ecology context I plan to apply that to large-scale landscape transmission with my current research.

April 2021