Evolutionary Conservation Biology
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Welcome to the Cassin Sackett lab!
Research in our lab centers around evolutionary processes in wildlife, from adaptation to changing conditions to diversification across space and time. Much of our work uses wildlife diseases as models to study adaptation. We combine field and lab approaches with genomic and bioinformatic tools to understand evolution in complex disease systems. Current research in the lab occurs in three main systems: 1) avian malaria in Hawaiian honeycreepers, 2) sylvatic plague in prairie dogs, and 3) parasites and pathogens of capybaras. These systems are explored across spatial and phylogenetic scales ranging from microevolution within populations to spatially dynamic communities in metapopulations to multiple species across a phylogeny.
You can find our latest publications on GoogleScholar and ResearchGate, and follow us (via Loren) on BlueSky.
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Latest News
Fall 2024: We are excited to welcome Carolina Thomas Rojas to the lab! Carolina hails from Universidad de los Andes in Colombia and will be studying microbiomes, genomes, and transcriptomes in chiguiros (capybara). We are so happy to have you here!
December 2023: Anna Jackson has completed her Master's degree and is moving on to greener pastures (Brown U). Anna won an award for outstanding Master's student at UL. Congratulations, Anna!
May 2023: We are thrilled that our project "Predicting the evolution of disease resistance in heterogeneous landscapes" was funded by NSF! This project builds on a lot of ongoing work and also has some exciting new dimensions and collaborations. Prospective students can find out more here.
March 2023: Very excited to see the fruit of a long labor by our colleague Kristina Paxton in our paper on the transcriptome response to experimental avian malaria infection in Hawai'i 'amakihi. Read the paper here!
Fall 2022: We are happy to welcome our newest PhD student, Jordan Love, to the lab. Jordan comes to us by way of Louisiana Tech and Mississippi College and has received a fellowship to work on prairie dog fleas and pathogens. Excited to have you here, Jordan!
March 2022: Carlos was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Graduate Fellowship to explore changes in the genomes of endangered and stable Hawaiian honeycreepers. Congratulations, Carlos!
Old news can be viewed in the News Archive.
December 2023: Anna Jackson has completed her Master's degree and is moving on to greener pastures (Brown U). Anna won an award for outstanding Master's student at UL. Congratulations, Anna!
May 2023: We are thrilled that our project "Predicting the evolution of disease resistance in heterogeneous landscapes" was funded by NSF! This project builds on a lot of ongoing work and also has some exciting new dimensions and collaborations. Prospective students can find out more here.
March 2023: Very excited to see the fruit of a long labor by our colleague Kristina Paxton in our paper on the transcriptome response to experimental avian malaria infection in Hawai'i 'amakihi. Read the paper here!
Fall 2022: We are happy to welcome our newest PhD student, Jordan Love, to the lab. Jordan comes to us by way of Louisiana Tech and Mississippi College and has received a fellowship to work on prairie dog fleas and pathogens. Excited to have you here, Jordan!
March 2022: Carlos was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Graduate Fellowship to explore changes in the genomes of endangered and stable Hawaiian honeycreepers. Congratulations, Carlos!
Old news can be viewed in the News Archive.
For fun: Loren's most recently uploaded observations to iNaturalist
