14 February 2018 - Ranking high among Peterson Lab achievements, Marlon Cobos and Claudia Nuñez were just voted "cutest couple" in a competition online, for this photo. 2 February 2018 - KU doctoral student Ali Khalighifar passed his comprehensive oral exams, and so is now officially a Ph.D. candidate! 2 February 2018 - Former KU postdoc Rodrigue Idohou was inducted as an Affiliate of the African Academy of Sciences! See this site 31 January 2018 - Sainge Moses, a Cameroonian student coadvised by Town Peterson at the Cape University of Technology in Cape Town, South Africa, has had his doctoral dissertation approved, so he is now DR Sainge Moses 1 December 2017 - Marianna Simões both defends her dissertation AND celebrates her birthday in ONE DAY. Superhuman! 1 December 2017 - Kate Ingenloff and Ben Freeman take off for a Biodiversity Informatics for Development workshop in Cape Town, South Africa 15 October 2017 - Town Peterson and former lab member Yoshi Nakazawa, among others, published a paper summarizing field work and testing for monkeypox infections in wild mammals of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Available here. 7 October 2017 - Lab members Thilina de Silva, Ben Freeman, and Fernando Machado, plus Moyle Lab students Jack Hruska and Lucas DeCicco, gave presentations at the Kansas Ornithological Society meeting in Salina, Kansas. Thilina won the best paper award. Congratulations, Thilina! 17 July 2017 - Lab alumnus Ryan Lash completed his doctoral studies at the University of Georgia. He is employed as a mapper/modeler at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. 15 July 2017 - Ph.D. student Kate Ingenloff's first dissertation chapter published... Congratulations Kate Ingenloff. First dissertation chapter PUBLISHED! Albatross distributions. Accessible here. 14 July 2017 - Past Peterson student Luis Escobar and future Peterson student Daniel Romero publish a paper on epidemiological survey fatigue as a phenomenon in public health data. Accessible here. 8 June 2017 - Ph.D. student Kate Ingenloff leaves for a 6-week internship at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland, to learn techniques for working with seabird tracking data. 9 June 2017 - Lab visitor Mariano Altamiranda just published the results of his work while at KU, on malaria vectors in Colombia. Available here. 21 May 2017 - just published, a first paper with Uzma Ashraf and colleagues in Pakistan. It is on climate change effects on olive distributions in central Asia. Available here. April 2017 - comments from Town Peterson were featured in a blog post with Mother Nature News, about invasive species and climate change. 12 April 2017 - new colleague Osma Ashraf and Town Peterson completed massive and comprehensive revisions to a paper on climate change effects on olive tree distributions across Central Asia just two days ago... today, the paper was accepted for publication at Ecosphere! What a nice surprise. 10 April 2017 - Abdu Alkishe presented and successfully defended his masters thesis today! Climate change effects on the tick species that is the principal Lyme disease vector in Europe and North Africa, Ixodes ricinus. April 2017 - Former Ph.D. student Luis Escobar was offered and has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in disease ecology at Virginia Tech University. Bravo Luis! 6 April 2017 - Former Ph.D. student Lindsay Campbell (and Town Peterson) was part of the author team on a paper entitled "Influences of climate change on the potential distribution of Lutzomyia longipalpis sensu lato (Psychodidae: Phlebotominae)" has been accepted for publication in International Journal for Parasitology. Hate to admit it, but this is a project that began in 2002, so it only took 15 years to finish!!!!! 6 April 2017 - Former Ph.D. student Abdallah Samy's paper on mosquitoes and climate change was featured by GBIF: see story here. March 2017 - Lindsay Campbell and Alana Alexander had a paper accepted for publication in Journal of Medical Entomology, on genetic structure of an East African mosquito species. It was a chapter in Lindsay's dissertation. 6 March 2017 - Sumudu Fernando's first dissertation chapter published. Available HERE. Published in Neotropical Biodiversity. 5-10 March 2017 - Town Peterson attends a Gordon Research Conference entitled, "Chemical & Biological Terrorism Defense," held in Ventura, California. He will be presenting on the potential role of "Creative Malicious Biologists" in bioterrorism. 18 February 2017 - Town Peterson published a first paper in an Iranian journal, available here. The paper treats estimation of bird species richness across one Iranian province, for conservation planning purposes. 16 February 2017 - Sumudu Fernando, doctoral student, had her first dissertation chapter accepted for publication in the journal Neotropical Biodiversity. 6 February 2017 - Daniel Jimenez, a professor from the University of Puebla, has arrived in the Lab for a one-year stay. Welcome, Daniel! 13 January 2017 - YES, Friday the 13th - Lindsay Campbell officially has departed for her postdoc at CDC. We wish her the very very best. January 2017 - Ph.D. student Sumudu Fernando passes her comprehensive exams, and is now a Ph.D. candidate officially. Now she has a few years in which to develop her doctoral dissertation! 5 January 2017 - Abdallah Samy and Town Peterson published a paper on bluetongue virus and climate change... it was just featured in a GBIF news item. December 2016 - Peterson Ph.D. student Thilina de Silva's first dissertation chapter accepted for publication in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. The chapter presents a first phylogenetic tree for the weaverbird family Ploceidae. Available here. December 2016 - Former lab member and Peterson co-advisee for his Ph.D. Luis Escobar published a nice paper in Scientific Reports on disease transmission trends in the face of climate change. See the open access paper here. 28 November 2016 - Lindsay Campbell defended her dissertation successfully, which was on the effects of landscape on mosquito populations. Congratulations, Dr. Lindsay! 28 November 2016 - Former student, Yoshi Nakazawa, wins the 2016 Denslow Prize for the best paper in the journal Biotropica in the preceding year. The paper in question was the 2nd chapter of Yoshi's dissertation at KU. See announcement and essay here. 4 November 2016 - Thilina de Silva passes his comprehensive examination, and is now a candidate for the Ph.D. That means that he has a couple of years in which to develop his doctoral dissertation, which focuses on evolutionary processes in the weaverbirds. 12 October 2016 - Town Peterson and Research Associate Adolfo Navarro (plus one more colleague, Alejandro Gordillo) publish a paper in Archives of Natural History, at this LINK. The paper details the evolution of Mexican ornithology in terms of information availability, and how Mexican ornithologists in effect took control of their own destiny over recent decades. 10 October 2016 - Town Peterson goes to the Scholarly Communication Institute, in North Carolina, as part of one of five teams focused on improving access to the scholarly literature. Peterson's team focuses on the role and challenges of global voices in the scholarly communications realm. 9 September 2016 - Just published ... former postdoc Rodrigue Idohou and Beninese colleagues (and Town Peterson!): new paper on palm cultivation potential, here. 7 September 2016 - Just published ... Digital Accessible Knowledge and well-inventoried sites for birds in Mexico: baseline sites for measuring faunistic change. With colleagues and former students from Mexico. Available here. 1 September 2016 - Now-Dr. Abdallah Samy led an effort to produce a detailed map of the geographic potential of Zika virus worldwide, which was just published in a Brazilian public health journal, available here. The author team included Town Peterson and Kevin Cohoon, a veteran undergraduate researcher in the Peterson Lab from back in the 1990s, and now an M.D. at the Mayo Clinic! August 2016 - The Virtual Vector Lab project won the Alejandro Luquetti Prize in the area of Vectors and Reservoirs in the recent meeting of the Brazilian Tropical Medicine Society. KU authors included Ed Komp (ITTC and BI), Lindsay Campbell (BI), Jarrett Mellenbruch (Spencer Art Museum), Hannah Owens (KU BI Ph.D.), and Town Peterson. August 2016 - Yoshi Nakazawa and Town Peterson's recent paper in Biotropica was just awarded the Julie Denslow Prize as the best contribution to Biotropica in the past year. 30 August 2016 - KU Ornithology's Jacob Cooper just published a paper (click here!), on the birds of Equatorial Guinea, including nine first country records, the result of extensive work by himself and his colleagues in the country. 28 August 2016 - Rachael Bible, a soon-to-be-Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in Anthropology, has joined the lab as a postdoctoral researcher. She will work on various projects related to human and animal distributions across the end of the Pleistocene and into the Recent. 18 August 2016 - KU Ornithology's Pete Hosner, Mike Andersen, Mark Robbins, Luis Sánchez-González, Adolfo Navarro-Sigüenza, Roger Boyd, Hannah Owens, and Town Peterson recently reported on our work across the central Andes of Peru, in and near the Department of Ayacucho (paper available here). This paper was just awarded the WIlson Society's Edwards Prize for best paper in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology in the past year. Congratulations all! 17 August 2016 - Town Peterson presents a talk on Detecting Biodiversity Change in a symposium on climate change effects on bird conservation at the North American Ornithological Congress, in Washington, D.C. August 2016 - Lab alumnus Luis Escobar published neat review of disease geography, in Frontiers in Microbiology. 13 July 2016 - Tashitso successfully defended her masters thesis! CONGRATULATIONS, Tashi! Nice work on biodiversity pattern in Philippine frogs! July 2016 Abdallah Samy and Town Peterson, with global colleagues (including former Peterson Lab student Kevin Cohoon, now M.D. at Mayo Clinic), publish a global mapping of Zika virus potential, with some decomposition and identification of drivers of transmission in different regions. Although still in final stages of review, it is available publicly at this link. July 2016 Abdallah Samy and Town Peterson published the first species-by-species mapping of the geographic potential of disease caused by Ebola and Marburg viruses in Africa. Available at this link, albeit behind an Elsevier paywall. 30 June 2016 Town Peterson presented the 25th Global Online Seminar in Biodiversity Informatics, on data cleaning ... https://youtu.be/vAocyixcewI. 14 May 2016 Town Peterson heads to Taiwan to teach a course at the National Taiwan Normal University, and lecturing at the National Cheng Kung University, both in Taiwan. Short trip--just 11 days, start to finish. 11 May 2016. Rita Donalisio, professor at the Universidade de Campinas, in southern Brazil, and specialist in zoonotic diseases, arrived in the lab, to work with Town Peterson and Abdallah Samy (more with Abdallah than with Town!). She will be in the lab working for a little more than two weeks. 11 May 2016. Town Peterson and colleagues (including LONG-time colleague Adolfo Navarro and younger colleague Jano Nuñez) published a paper on the geographic genetics of a common lowland thrush in Mesoamerica. Pleistocene diversification and speciation of White-throated Thrush. 10 May 2016. Town Peterson and colleagues (including former student Luis Escobar and former postdoc Qiao Huijie) published a commentary on a CDC travel guideline about travel by pregnant women to zika-affected areas. Link. 5 May 2016. Abdallah Samy completed his doctoral studies, with a presentation of his dissertation results to the university community. He was granted the Ph.D., and awarded Honors for his excellent achievements. May 2016. Rodrigue Idohou, of the University of Abomey-Calavi, in Benin, was a BITC trainee and long-term postdoctoral visitor to the Peterson Lab in 2015-2016. His work on climate change and palm species conservation was just published. Mar 2016. Lindsay Campbell in Peru for Latinamerican meetings of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, where she will present research results on landscape influences on rodent communities in the western Amazon Basin, and meet with a project team to further that work. Feb-Mar 2016. Town Peterson in India as a Fulbright Specialist, based at the Wildlife Institute of India. He is presenting courses and one-on-one mentoring in biodiversity informatics, ecological niche modeling, and disease transmission risk analysis. Nov 2015. Lindsay Campbell and Abdallah Samy traveled to Philadelphia to attend the meetings of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and each presented the results of her/his work in the area of mapping disease ecology. Nov 2015. Town Peterson and Jorge Soberon traveled to New York City to attend a Task Group meeting convened by the Global Biodiversity Informatics Facility, which included a public event hosted by the American Museum of Natural History. For detail and photos, see #GBIFfrontiers, or online see https://twitter.com/hashtag/gbiffrontiers. Nov 2015. Kate Ingenloff traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, and presented a poster entitled "Ecological Niche and Distribution of Wandering Albatrosses in the Southern Oceans" in the Second World Seabird Conference. Dec 2015. Town, Kate Ingenloff, and lab alumna Mona Papes teach a course in Biodiversity Conservation Implementation in Ethiopia. Oct 2015. Lindsay Campbell published a paper on her studies of buruli ulcer in West Africa.Updates
Research
Systematic Ornithology — As a first love in science, Peterson maintains active interests in systematic ornithology. Working with Robert Moyle and Mark Robbins, Peterson codirects the Division of Ornithology in the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute. In particular, they codirect one of the most active graduate programs in systematic ornithology globally, and simultaneously one of the most active global bird sampling programs. Division research is generally specimen based, and explores diverse topics of the evolution, distribution, and diversity of birds worldwide.
Distributional Ecology — Over the past 20 years, Peterson has become intensely interested in the environmental, landscape, and biotic factors that together constrain and shape the geographic distributions of species. With colleague Jorge Soberón and others, Peterson has explored conceptual dimensions of these questions, as well as many practical and applied applications of deep understanding of distributional ecology to biodiversity-related questions. This work was summarized in a 2011 book, published by Princeton University Press, entitled Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions, which was co-authored with six valued colleagues. Petersons distributional ecology work continues, largely in collaboration with members of the Biodiversity and Macroecology Laboratory.
Historical Biogeography — Peterson has an intense interest in the historical processes of landscape and climate change that have shaped the evolution and distribution of biodiversity. This work has evolved out of exploration of the potential of ecological niche modeling to inform about paleodistributional patterns, particularly in tandem with molecular sequence data and quantitative phylogeographic analyses. Currently, Peterson is working with regionwide assessments of historical biogeographic patterns underlying phylogeographic patterns across the Amazon Basin, in Southeast Asia, and in the tepui region of northern South America.
Disease Transmission — Over the past 15 years, Peterson has extended his interests in distributional ecology to reflect on mapping challenges in the area of disease transmission risk mapping. This work has led him to collaborate with specialists expert in dengue, malaria, Ebola, Chagas disease, hantavirus, plague, tularemia, and many other zoonotic diseases. On a more conceptual level, this work has resulted in a new viewpoint on spatial epidemiology and mapping challenges related to disease transmission risk. Much of this work is now summarized in a book to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press, as well as in many published scientific journal articles.
Online Learning Resources for Biodiversity — A major project that began in 2012 is the Biodiversity Informatics Training Curriculum, which received major funding from the JRS Biodiversity Foundation. The program consists of developing detailed and comprehensive in-person training courses and the online digital training resources covering the entirety of the field of biodiversity informatics. The project centers on Africa, and has already held training courses in Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Uganda, and Cameroon, and has courses planned for Ethiopia and Taiwan. Project information is coordinated via a Facebook page, and all training resources are made available via a project website.
Chickens and Junglefowl — A long-term project in which Peterson has been involved constitutes a 17 year collaboration with I. Lehr Brisbin, of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratories (now retired), and several other colleagues. The project centers on a population of Red Junglefowl that appear to be the only, or one of very few, genetically pure populations of this most important bird species, which gave rise to the domestic chicken. This project has involved behavioral studies, hybridization experiments, phenotypic analyses, and now of genomic analyses of this unique population of junglefowl.
Virtual Vector Laboratory — With generous support from the Office of the Provost of the University of Kansas, Peterson has been working for the past two years in close collaboration with the Information and Telecommunication Technology Center and Spencer Art Museum of the University of Kansas, the University of Brasilia, and the National Public Health Institute of Mexico to develop automated identification systems for the vectors of Chagas’ disease. This project is presently in an advanced prototype stage, and is seeing active development, both in the area of technology development and data resource development, but also in active implementation of usable, real-world knowledge infrastructures for public health applications.