Bret D. Elderd
Ronald and Denise Alvarez Professor 
SEE Division
PhD: University of California, Santa Cruz, 2002
Phone: 225-578-6733
Lab Phone: 225-578-8047
Office: A206 Life Sciences Annex
Lab: 27a/27b/223/232 Life Sciences Building & 350 Life Sciences Annex
E-mail: [email protected]
Area of Interest
My research focuses on examining how disease outbreaks, community structure, and stochasticity influence population dynamics by combining field-based experimental and theoretical modeling approaches. I'm particularly interested in:
- Virus transmission and insect outbreaks
- Variability in disease transmission
- Disturbance and riparian community structure
- Population viability and rare species management
If you're interested in joining my research group, please email me. I'm seeking both students and post-docs to work on projects involving either population or community ecology. In particular, I take a quantitative approach to ecological questions and would require that my students have some interest or training in mathematical ecology/modeling. While students may work on projects closely affiliated with my research, I encourage them to seek out their own research identity.
Selected Publications
Richards, R. L., B. D. Elderd, and M. A. Duffy (2023). Unhealthy herds and the predator-spreader: Understanding when predation increases disease incidence and prevalence. Ecology and Evolution 13, e9918.
Van Allen, B. G., F. P. Dillemuth, V. Dukic, and B. D. Elderd (2023). Viral transmission and infection prevalence in a cannibalistic host-pathogen system. Oecologia 201, 499–511.
Elderd, B. D., N. Mideo, and M. A. Duffy (2022). Looking across scales in disease ecology and evolution. The American Naturalist 199, 51–58.
Foster, G., B. D. Elderd, R. L. Richards, and T. Dallas (2022). Estimating R0 from early exponential growth: Parallels between 1918 influenza and 2020 SARS-CoV-2 pandemics. PNAS Nexus 1(4).
Shaffery, P., B. D. Elderd, and V. Dukic (2020). A note on species richness and the variance of epidemic severity. Journal of Mathematical Biology 80, 2055–2074.
Acevedo, M. A., F. P. Dillemuth, M. Faldyn, A. Flick, and B. D. Elderd (2019). Virulence- driven trade-offs in disease transmission: A meta-analysis. Evolution 73, 636–647.
Elderd, B. D. (2019). Bottom-up trait-mediated indirect effects decrease pathogen transmission in a tritrophic system. Ecology 100, e02551.
Faldyn, M. J., M. D. Hunter, and B. D. Elderd (2018). Climate change and an invasive, tropical milkweed: An ecological trap for monarch butterflies. Ecology 99, 1031–1038.