Infectious Disease Ecology

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Infectious disease is a universal phenomenon in the living world: all organisms have parasites, and most species themselves are parasites. As such, understanding infectious disease is a crucial component of understanding nature, and of human society’s place within it. In this course, I will provide a comprehensive overview of the biology, ecology, and evolution of infectious diseases in humans and animals. The course content will span a wide range of processes, building from fine-scale molecular mechanisms and interactions with the immune system, through behavioural processes and disease transmission, up to ecosystem-level phenomena including global change and pandemic disease emergence. In doing so, students will learn to link together complex processes across multiple scales, using the enormous diversity of infectious organisms to understand the inner workings of ecological systems.