News

Unlike last year, now known as California's mega drought, this year has started with water in the ponds. Ty McCaffrey is leading the team this year after successfully defending his thesis (Congrats Ty). They are about a month into sampling with some notable details already. For the first time in...

The summer necropsy team has been busy dissecting and identifying parasites. This summer we have six new necropsy technicians (Carmella Bonato, Skylar Davidson, Erin Hobday, Hannah Garner, Jasmine Groves, and Clara Hassan). All of the new members are fully supported by the awards they earned! Specifically, NSF RAHSS (Clara), UROP...

Laboratory Manager Dana Calhoun MS, LVT, and Research Technician, Jamie Curtis, were invited to the Denver Nature and Science Museum to dissect P. Haliaetus commonly known as osprey. Rough dissections were made at the facility to remove the gastrointestinal tracts of five ospreys. Back in the lab, Dana has been...

The Johnson Laboratory ( http:///www.johnsonlaboratory.com ) here at the University of Colorado is actively seeking CU Boulder undergraduate students to gain research experience and get PAID ($2,000-3,000) this summer. We are looking for independent, self-motivated undergraduate students who are passionate about pursuing research in aquatic ecology and conservation to apply...

Graduate student Brendan Hobart lead an investigation into the association of a snail predator Chaetogaster limnaei and nine trematodes...

Undergraduate student Madelyn Maclaughlin drew a visual representation of her group project in this years annual UROP Sidewalk Symposium...

Both graduate students Wynne Moss and Travis McDevitt-Galles successfully completed their PhD’s and landed competitive post-doctoral positions.....

Olivia Milloway, one of our NSF REU recipients for this summer, explored our 10-years of field collection data from the Bay Area of CA to investigate the relationship between Bd transmission and bullfrogs......

We are currently accepting applications for highly motivated, dynamic, and engaged candidates interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in aquatic disease ecology.....

Field season for 2021 is offically over! This year the CA mega-drought was raging. In fact 45 ponds went dry in total, nearly half of our sites! Interestingly, 37 of those were dry before our second visit which typically occurs in July. We are exicted to investigate how amphibians parasites...

In a new paper from Journal of Plankton Research , Kelly Loria, Kyle Christianson, and Pieter Johnson use a decade of data from an alpine lake in Colorado to understand how shifting climate is altering the zooplankton community. Phenology of alpine zooplankton populations and the importance of lake ice-out Abstract...

Former undergraduate student Dylan Rose teamed up with Dr. Johnson and Dana Calhoun to conduct a study on Olencira praegustator, an isopod that parasitizes the mouths and gill chambers of Brevoortia tyrannus (Atlantic menhaden), a key economic species that supports the largest fishery on the eastern U.S. coast. Infection prevalence...

Understanding how many animals are killed by wildlife disease is a tremendously difficult question to address. In a new study, Mark Wilber and colleagues combine information on parasite distributions, extensive field data, and laboratory experiments to estimate – for the first time – how many amphibians die annually from trematode...

Despite the current pandemic, the Johnson Lab 2020 Field Team was able to collect host and parasite data from 80 ponds and wetlands in California this summer. Way to go!

Graduate student Wynne Moss and Dr. Johnson were awarded a new supplement through the NSF-INTERN program! This program supports graduate students in collaborating with non-academic entities, for which Wynne will be analyzing amphibian data from agencies in California. Wynne will be working with the East Bay Regional Parks District in...

Undergraduate researcher Erica Ursich has recently been awarded a Fulbright Grant to Brazil under the project title, "Snake Assemblage in the Atlantic Forest and the Impact of Edge-effect on Species Prevalence". She will be working with the Institute for Ecological Research, IPÊ (Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas) to help begin a...

We are excited to announce a new publication as part of a special issue in Aquatic Sciences on mountain lake ecology. Led by Kelly Loria, the study involved an extensive survey of lakes across an elevational gradient in Colorado's Rocky Mountains. The life aquatic in high relief: shifts in the...

In a newly published article in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B , Ph.D. candidate Travis McDevitt-Galles highlights how phenological synchrony between infectious parasites and vulnerable hosts is a key determinant of disease risk, with important implications for forecasted climate shifts. Phenological synchrony shapes pathology in host–parasite systems...

The Hazel Barnes Prize is the largest and most prestigious award given annually to a CU Boulder faculty member who exemplifies the enriching inter-relationship between teaching and research, and whose work has had a positive impact on students, faculty, colleagues and the university. As noted in the nomination materials, this...

Nine EBIO Graduate Students were awarded funding from the Graduate School through the Beverly Sears Grants and our Wynne Moss was one of them! The Bev Sears endowment fund was created to honor Bev Sears in recognition of her longstanding loyalty and efforts on behalf of the Graduate School. Bev...

Please help us welcome Brendan Hobart to the Johnson Laboratory as our new PhD student! Brendan comes to us from the Peery Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he earned a Masters investigating the California spotted owl. Stay tuned to see what Brendan will work...

It's offical--Tara Stewart Merrill PhD from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will be joining the Johnson Laboratory in August! We are very excited to have Tara for a three year Post Doc where she will investigate how among-and-within- species variation in parasite competence affects the dynamic of infectious disease. Tara was...

The Johnson Lab joins collaborators from UCSF Medical School (Nadav Ahituv and Jingjing Zhao) in a study to understand how parasites change the development of their hosts using transcriptome approaches.

A new paper coauthored by Stefanie Johnson at the Leeds School of Business and Pieter Johnson links infection by a widespread parasite to entrepreneurial careers in CU students. The paper explores the connection between the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii and patterns of entrepreneurship in students, business professionals and nations. See press...

In the BBC television show World’s Weirdest Events , the Johnson Lab's research on parasite-induced deformities in amphibians is featured in episode 6, including footage of field and laboratory work as well as a sit-down interview with Dr. Johnson. October 10, 2015 Image by D. Herasimtschuk, Freshwaters Illustrated

In the November 2014 issue of National Geographic , the cover story focuses on the capacity of parasites to alter their hosts in bizarre yet fascinating ways. The accompanying story by Carl Zimmer features a broad range of examples, including the ability of the trematode parasite Ribeiroia ondatrae to cause...