Principal Investigator

Dr. Alex Strauss (he/him)

I am a quantitative disease and community ecologist. I am especially interested in disease ecology in the context of global changes such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and environmental eutrophication. I like to approach my research by combining three iterative and complementary perspectives: observations in nature inspire relevant questions, experiments test specific predictions, and mathematical models generalize and formalize theory. I mostly work in aquatic systems, focusing on parasites that infect zooplankton, but I also have a few projects in terrestrial grasslands.

Lab Manager

Jakob Scholeno

I am interested in understanding how aquatic invertebrates are affected by their environment. I am especially focused on plankton community dynamics and drivers of ecosystem change. I received my BS in marine biology from The University of New Haven in 2020, and am currently finishing my MS in Environmental Science & Ecology from SUNY Brockport. In my masters program I worked with Dr. Michael Chislock to understand how nutrient driven algal blooms and microplastics work interactively to impact aquatic communities with a focus on zooplankton community structure, and Daphnia and the amphipod Hyallella azteca‘s life history characteristics.  I am excited to combine my past experience with current and future research in the Strauss Lab.

email: Jakob.Scholeno@uga.edu
 

Postdocs

Graduate Students

Katie Schroeder (she/her)

I’m interested in the interactions between disease spread and community and ecosystem ecology. I especially enjoy thinking about how environmental conditions affect disease transmission and ecosystem processes. My undergrad research spanned from microbial bioremediation of selenium to the effects of metal ions on nectar microbial communities to carbon cycling and fungal disease in grasslands. I’m excited to combine different parts of these previous research experiences and learn a whole bunch of new things!
 
email: k.schroeder@uga.edu

James Oni

I investigate how complex community interactions and stressors shape disease outcomes. I leverage the Daphnia-Australozyma system and approach most of my questions by combining field data, lab experiments, and mathematical models. At the moment, I am working on the potential for terminal investment in hosts and investigating disease spillover and spillback dynamics in interactions involving atypical hosts/parasites.
 
email: James.Oni@uga.edu / Onijames4@gmail.com

Nina Simone Warner

I am interested in freshwater ecology, conservation, and animal behavior. I have worked on various research projects with aquatic animals such as turtles, crayfish, frogs, and salamanders. My masters thesis is observing the consumptive and non-consumptive effects of mosquitofish ( Gambusia) presence in Daphnia dentifera over multiple generations and how disease affects these dynamics.

 
email: ninasimonewarner@uga.edu

Elizabeth Sicking

Undergraduate Students

Liv Ritacco

I joined the lab in 2024 and worked on a CURO project researching the effects of temperature fluctuation frequencies in host (Daphnia dentifera) parasite (Metschnikowia bicuspidata) dynamics. I also assist with general lab maintenance.

Leah Becker

I joined the lab in 2026, and since then I have helped maintain lab cultures as well as begun my CURO project with Elizabeth Sicking. My project focuses on the differences in the communities of zooplankton and aquatic insects between edge and center habitats in manmade water sources. I hope to explore more inquiries within aquatic ecology in the future.

Lillian Jones

I joined the lab in 2026 and am a Biological Science major in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences on the pre-med track. I am interested in infectious disease research, particularly how ecosystems and host-parasite dynamics respond to changes in resource variability and temperature fluctuations. Through my research, I hope to further explore the connections between environmental conditions and disease dynamics.

Joshua Reeder

I joined the lab in 2025. Since then, I’ve enjoyed working with James Oni investigating terminal investment, disease spillover, and disease spillback dynamics via the Daphnia-Australozyma monospora system while also helping maintain lab cultures. I’m excited to continue to explore related questions especially in the context of biodiversity loss.

Lab Alumni

Former Grad Students

Kelly Mayes, MS Student 2023-2025. For Kelly’s MS thesis, she surveyed emergence rates of chironomid midges, putative definitive hosts of the microsporidians, in local reservoirs in Athens, Georgia. Kelly characterized midge diversity both morphologically and genetically, and found an astounding diversity of chironomid species richness. Kelly graduated in 2025 and is currently a lab technician elsewhere at UGA.

Former Postdocs

Elizabeth Warburton, Postdoc 2024-2025. Elizabeth was funded by a CEID fellowship and collaborated with the Strauss lab on the macroecology of complex lifecycles and the local microsporidian system. She also contributed to our local field survey of microsporidian parasites. Elizabeth is currently faculty at Middle Georgia State University.

Robbie Richards, Teaching Postdoc 2022-2023. Robbie held a Teaching Postdoc position in the Odum school and conducted research in the Strauss lab on the effects of stage structure on healthy herds dynamics, using mathematical theory. Robbie is currently teaching faculty at Georgia Tech.

Former Lab Managers

Christopher Brandon, Lab Manager 2022-2024. Christopher graduated from UGA 2022 and continued as lab manager of the Strauss lab for two years. He left the lab manager position to start a PhD in disease ecology at Colorado State University. We still get to catch up with Christopher at conferences!

Kate Galbraith, Lab Manager 2021-2022. Kate was the inaugural lab manager of the Strauss lab! She helped set up the lab, lead exploratory surveys of local ponds, and helped oversee the first round of experiments in the lab. After leaving the Strauss lab, Kate accepted a Disability Services Coordinator position at UGA.

Former Undergraduates

Eileen Brook, REU student 2025 and 2026 from Georgia Tech. Eileen conducted two REU projects. For the first one, she tested the sensitivity of three different Chadian copepod lineages to the chemical larvicide Abate. She found that two lineages were highly susceptible, but that a third was very sensitive. For her second REU, Eileen tested whether the chemical elicited any sublethal effects for the resistant lineage at the population scale. She found that juveniles (and overall population growth rate) appeared much more sensitive than adults.

Leo Gabara, REU student 2026 from Yale. For his REU project, Leo experimentally manipulated water chemistry to explore ways to maximize settling of clay. Our previous work had shown that suspended clay can inhibit the chemical Abate, which is applied with the goal of killing cyclopoid copepods, intermediate hosts for the Guinea worm parasite. Leo found that suspension of bentonite clay is highly sensitive to the concentrations of calcium and magnesium.

Caleb Christian, Lab technician 2025. Caleb helped keep the lab running. He helped with maintaining cultures of zooplankton and phytoplankton and assisted with the spring field survey.

Jane Nease, CURO student 2026. For her CURO project, Jane compared the size of Daphnia from a mesocosm experiment in which Daphnia were exposed to either a lethal predator (free-swimming Gambusia mosquitofish) or a nonlethal predator (mosquitofish in a mesh cage). Preliminary results indicated that the Daphnia were larger in the presence of the nonlethal predator.

Tricia Babb, CURO student 2025. For her CURO project, Tricia compared susceptibility two species of Daphnia hosts to a single species of parasite (Metschnikowia bicupsidata) that was reared in either the same host or the other host. She conducted the first few rounds of this experiment, which was then maintained for several more generations by other lab members. Tricia found ‘rearing effects’ that emerged after just one generation. Tricia graduated from UGA in 2026 and is now prepping for Anesthesiologist Assistant School.

Reina Scott, Lab technician and CURO student 2024-2026. Reina worked on several projects, including how changing temperatures affect Daphnia population growth rates as well as their host-parasite relationship with Metschnikowia bicuspidata. She also characterized the sensitivity of several rotifers and copepods to the chemical Abate and assisted with our spring field surveys. Reina graduated from UGA in 2026.

Emilie Dudgeon, CURO student 2024. Emilie joined the lab in 2024 and worked on multiple CURO projects including 1) effects of temperature and temperature fluctuations on growth rate of algae, and 2) effects of temperature and temperature fluctuations on feeding rate of Daphnia. Emilie graduated from UGA in 2025 and is currently applying for field tech positions.

Amelia Shugart, Lab technician. Amelia joined the lab in 2023 and helped sampled a competition experiment between Ceriodaphnia and Daphnia. She also assisted with general maintenance of colonies of lab organisms.

Avery Akins, CURO student 2024. For his CURO project, Avery studied how the age of spores of Metschnikowia, a fungal parasite that infects Daphnia, affects its infectivity. He found that spores that were harvested immediately after host death were so virulent that they killed hosts before the parasite could begin to replicate. Avery graduated in 2024. Avery is currently a lab technician in Bethlehem, Georgia.

Ava McCain, CURO student 2024. For her CURO project, Ava counted midges captured by emergence traps deployed at ponds during the spring 2024 outbreak season and sorted them by sex. Ava found that midge communities were dominated by males early in the spring season, and that sex ratio approached 50/50 later in the spring. Ava graduated from UGA in 2026.

Isaac Wood, CURO student and lab technician 2022-2024. Isaac contributed to the spring 2022 field season and was particularly interested in collecting adult chironomids (putative definitive hosts for the microsporidians) that emerged from the ponds. Isaac’s project was the first time that we characterized chironomid emergence rates from local reservoirs. He graduated from UGA in 2024 and is currently pursuing a MS degree in Geosciences at Georgia State University.

Gabe Sullivan-Brugger, CURO student and lab technician 2022-2023. Gabe worked on the local microsporidian system. He counted spore yield from infected field-collected cladocerans and processed them for genomic analyses. He confirmed that spore yield varies substantially among cladoceran host species. He graduated from UGA in 2023.

T’Kai Adekunle, REU student 2023 from Savannah State University. For her project, T’Kai determined the preference of mosquitofish predators for healthy vs. infected Daphnia, as well as juvenile vs. adult Daphnia. The fish selectively targetted infected Daphnia over uninfected ones, and also selectively targetted adults of juveniles! T’Kai presented this work multiple times, including at the Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in STEM.

Chris Romiluyi, CURO student in 2023. For his project, Chris helped Katie Schroeder and Daniel Suh measure feeding rate of Daphnia under various combinations of temperature and food concentrations. They found that feeding rates generally increased with temperature and decreased with higher food concentrations.

Emily Landolt, REU student 2022 from St. Norbert College. For her REU project, Emily asked whether eDNA can be used as a tool to estimate densities and relative abundances of zooplankton, in controlled mesocosm experiments. A weak relationship was detected, suggesting that this approach could be useful if further optimized. Emily is currently in a Microbiology PhD program at University of Tennessee Knoxville.

Jenavier Tejada, REU student 2022 from Dennison University. For her REU project, Jenavier asked how fluctuating temperatures affect competition between Daphnia and Ceriodaphnia, and whether disease dilution is more likely in an environment with variable temperature. Fluctuating temperatures did enable Ceriodaphnia to persist with Daphnia, but they had minimal effects on epidemics. Jenavier presented this research multiple times, including at the SACNAS National Diversity in STEM Conference.

Mackenzie Jordan, CURO student 2022. For her CURO project, Mackenzie investigated affects of temperature on susceptibility of two species of zooplankton (Daphnia and Ceriodaphnia) to the fungal parasite Metschnikowia bicuspidata. Warmer temperature increased the likelihood of infections in Daphnia, but the pattern was less clear for Ceriodaphnia. Mackenzie graduated from UGA in 2023 and is currently applying for graduate school programs in Hydrology.

Drew Mancao, CURO student 2022. For his CURO project, Drew investigated how temperature affected competition between two species of zooplankton, Daphnia dentifera and Ceriodaphnia dubia. Some evidence suggests that warmer temperatures should favor Ceriodaphnia, but that outcomes of competition varied strongly among genotypes of both species. Drew is currently Dental School at the Dental College of Georgia.

August Anderson, CURO Student 2021. For his CURO project, August determined infection prevalence of the endophyte epichloe in tall fescue at Horseshoe Bend (it’s very high!). He also scored fungal damage and measured length of host plant leaves growing in the field. August graduated from UGA in 2022. August is currently in Medical School at the Medical College of Georgia.

Hannah O’Grady, REU Student 2021 from Mount Holyoke College. For her REU project, Hannah asked whether different species of zooplankton infected with microsporidians differed in their spore yield (they do!). Through Hannah’s efforts, we also learned that these parasites cannot be transmitted horizontally between zooplankton, and that they likely have an intermediate host. Hannah graduated from Mount Holyoke in 2023.