Throughout history humans have altered the landscape to build cities, grow food, and extract vital natural resources. As human "footprints" have stretched to nearly every corner of the globe and altered many of the planet's ecosystems, countless questions abound as to how these changes affect the species inhabiting the Earth, including humans.

Sharon Collinge, an associate professor in the environmental studies program and ecology and evolutionary biology department, studies how habitat loss and fragmentation affect plant and animal populations and communities. Her current research involves black-tailed prairie dogs.

	At field sites in Boulder County such as this one, Sharon Collinge (top) and her field assistants collect blood samples and fleas from the black-tailed prairie dog population.

With grants from the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency, Collinge and her research team are focusing on how landscape structure and land use affect the spread of sylvatic plague in black-tailed prairie dogs, a keystone species in Western grasslands on whose existence many other species depend. Prairie dogs are susceptible to blood diseases such as plague, which is transmitted by fleas, so colonies that become infected by the disease often are completely wiped out.

"Our goal is to be able to understand more about the transmission and spread of the disease and ultimately how land conversion affects the spread of diseases," Collinge said.

Scientists believe plague resides in deer mice and are trying to determine what causes the disease to spread among the mice and then to prairie dogs through fleas. Collinge and her research team are visiting prairie dog colonies throughout Boulder County to collect blood samples and fleas from mice and prairie dogs so they can track the disease and determine if there is a connection between the disease's spread and urbanization.

"The bigger picture is that human activities might be changing the likelihood that diseases will occur," Collinge said. "It's very important to our own survival to learn as much as we can."

In 2004, Collinge was awarded an Aldo Leopold Fellowship for training in ecological leadership. The Leopold fellowships provide scientists with intensive communications and leadership training to help them communicate scientific information effectively to nonscientific audiences, especially policymakers, the media, business leaders, and the public.