[July 20 2025]  Wildlife HERO is collaborating closely with Oceanogràfic and CEU Cardinal Herrera University (Valencia, Spain) to design the new Master of Aquatic Animal Medicine program. Together with Dr. Shawn Johnson we are designing lectures for the Conservation Medicine and Research module, which will include introductions to disease ecology, statistics and data science. The course will start in January 2026. [More information]

​

[July 8 2025]  Dr. Benny Borremans (Wildlife HERO) attended the Bat Infectious Diseases conference at the University of Chicago, a 3-day conference that brings together researchers working on all aspects of infectious pathogens in bats. This was a great opportunity to present our work, catch up with old research friends, establish exciting new contacts, and present our work on virus transmission dynamics. It was inspiring to see how much amazing work is being done!

​

[February 18 2025]  GRANT AWARD! We are proud to announce that we received a grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for a collaborative project led by Prof. Raina Plowright (Cornell University). The goal of the project is to identify the environmental and population drivers of virus transmission in flying foxes. Wildlife HERO will be responsible for the modeling components of the study. Other collaborators involved in the project include Prof. Dan Becker (University of Oklahoma), Prof. Wanda Markotter (University of Pretoria) and Prof. Ali Peel (University of Sydney). [More information]

​

[February 26 2025]  Dr. Benny Borremans (Wildlife HERO) participated in a 3-day meeting in Portland organized by the Eastern Pacific Marine One Health Coalition. The goal of the meeting was to bring together experts working on various aspects of the marine ecosystem along the US West Coast, to facilitate closer collaborations, share the latest knowledge, and initiate student-led publications that address current knowledge needs. [EPMOHC website]

 

[February 13 2025]  We published an interactive dashboard for predicting outbreaks of leptospirosis in California sea lions. This is a tool based on ongoing work in which we are trying to identify the demographic and environmental factors that determine Leptospira transmission. The dashboard provides information about these factors, and an interactive figure that can be used to better understand their effects. This work was done for the Eastern Pacific Marine One Health Coalition, a network of collaborators working on various aspects of the US West Coast marine ecosystem. [Dashboard]

 

[January 16 2025]  We are working with Dr. Kwe Claude Yinda (NIH/NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratory) on a study of Hendra virus evolutionary dynamics. We are developing a statistical permutation approach to estimate whether the spatiotemporal distribution of virus clades is random over time. This will help determine how long clades have been circulating in different bat populations.

​

[August 30 2024]  NEW PUBLICATION! A study led by Dr. Benny Borremans (Wildlife HERO) was just published in Peer Community Journal. In this study we present a powerful new approach for modeling prevalence dynamics over time using both pooled and individual samples. The main advance of the model is the inclusion of a method that accounts for the effects of combining multiple samples into one (i.e., pooling), which is a common approach when working with bats (but also in other situations like wastewater sampling). [Full text]

​

[April 10 2024]  NEW PUBLICATION! Our work on the effects of inhalant anesthesia on Guadalupe Fur Seals, led by Dr. Lorraine Barbosa (Oiled Wildlife Care Network) was published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. We are happy to announce that we found no evidence for adverse effects of inhalant anesthesia. [Full text]

​​​

[October 2 2023]  NEW PUBLICATION! A large literature review on domoic acid toxicosis in California sea lions was published in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science, led by Dr. Abby McClain (National Marine Mammal Foundation). This article presents an analysis of an exceptional time series of sea lion strandings due to domoic acid, and introduces a new clinical assessment tool to determine releasability. We contributed to the analyses, figures and editing. This work will be essential in improving our understanding of a major threat to sea lion health that will continue to worsen as oceans warm up. [Full text]

​

[September 5 2023]  We joined a study led by Dr. Tamika Lunn (University of Arkansas) on changes in Hendra virus shedding over time, for which we will be developing a new statistical approach to quantify how virus concentration changes with infection prevalence. This will ultimately help us better understand and predict spillover to horses and humans.

​

[September 1 2023]  NEW PUBLICATION! A study led by Dr. Helman (UCLA) in which we found widespread evidence of Leptospira infection in urban wildlife in Southern California was published in Scientific Reports. [Full text]

​

[August 23 2023]  We are working with Dr. Lorraine Barbosa (Oiled Wildlife Care Network) on a study of the effects of inhalant anesthesia on free-ranging Guadalupe Fur Seals. This anesthetic is relatively easy and cheap to use in the field, but we want to make sure it does not cause any negative effects.

​

[August 21 2023]  NEW PUBLICATION! Estimating the time of infection is a notorious challenge when studying pathogen transmission, especially in wildlife. A new article led by Dr. Benny Borremans (Wildlife HERO) presents a new Bayesian modeling approach that helps to estimate time of infection in wildlife, including a case study on leptospirosis in Island foxes. The best thing about this approach is that it can be used in the absence of experimental data on antibody dynamics following infection, which means it can be applied to a wide range of species. You can find this work in Methods in Ecology and Evolution. [Full text]

 

[July 10 2023]  Wildlife HERO started working with Prof. Raina Plowright (Montana State University) and Prof. Alison Peel (Griffith University) to research the spread and spillover of Hendra virus in Australian flying foxes. Hendra virus can spill over from bats to horses and humans, with high fatality rates, and we want to find out what ecological conditions increase the risk of spillover. [More information]

​

[June 21 2023]  Celebrating the official start of Wildlife HERO! There are no guarantees that this project will work out, and what it will look like, but there is a vision, sky-high motivation, and it’s a dream worth chasing.

​

​