Department of Biology

Daniel Becker, a postdoctoral researcher in the IU College of Arts and Sciences Department of Biology and in the IU Environmental Resilience Institute, studies zoonotic pathogens (infectious agents transmitted from nonhuman vertebrate animals to humans) in wild birds and bats. Combining field studies and theoretical models, he strives to better understand how pathogens spread within and between animal populations and species. Becker also looks at how environmental change alters infectious disease risks.

COVID-19, one of a growing number of human diseases with suspected nonhuman animal origins, makes Becker’s research increasingly critical.

As lead author on the paper "Macroimmunology: The drivers and consequences of spatial patterns in wildlife immune defence" published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology, Becker provides new guidance for discovering patterns and identifying large-scale ecological drivers of variation in animal disease burden and immunity.

The British Ecological Society announced today that Becker has been given the Sidnie Manton Award for the best review article in the Journal of Animal Ecology by an early career researcher.

Lesley Lancaster, senior editor of the journal, noted, “The Novel Coronavirus pandemic has highlighted a need to document patterns and develop robust predictions for the spread of disease within and between wildlife and humans. Global-scale environmental changes such as climate change, urbanisation, and habitat loss are predicted to affect the spread of both disease and responses in hosts and pathogens.”

“Understanding drivers of disease may lead to better predictions and management of this and future pandemics,” Lancaster continued. “However, an integrative and synthetic approach to tackling these issues is often lacking, which has led some ecologists to call for the development of a broader field of global disease ecology. The ideas outlined in this winning paper are a step towards this goal.”

Becker and co-authors coin the term for an emerging field: “macroimmunology”—where macroecological approaches (the study of relationships between organisms and their environment at large scales) are applied to ecoimmunology (the study of the causes and consequences of variation in immunity). They argue that macroecology could help to identify environmental determinants of wildlife immune defense, guiding a better understanding of how factors like climate change, biological invasions, and land conversions such as urbanization and habitat loss could affect animal susceptibility to infection and risks of spreading disease.

In response to receiving the award, Becker said, “It’s a great honor to receive the Sidnie Manton Award. Journal of Animal Ecology is one of my favorite resources for disease ecology and ecoimmunology studies, and this work is a timely collaboration between these fields to better understand and predict how environmental change affects infectious disease.”

The award is named in honor of Sidnie Manton, a highly regarded zoologist best known for her work on the functional morphology and evolution of arthropods, also known as simply “the high priestess of the arthropods.” She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1948.