Honorable Mention award for best student paper - ESA

In 2024, the Disease Ecology section ESA (Ecological Society of America) honored me with the Honorable Mention Award for Best Student Paper for my publication in Systematic Biology, from my Ph.D. research.

Our new paper, “Effect of host-switching on the ecological and evolutionary patterns of parasites” published in Systematic Biology, provides a substantial contribution to answering fundamental questions in ecology and evolution: How do parasite species evolve while associated with their host species? What are the prevalent processes governing the diversification of interacting lineages? Previous research has extensively studied processes such as cospeciation between parasites and their hosts and has often neglected the contribution of host switching to the diversification of parasites. In this paper, we provide a new theoretical model to simulate host switching intensity and parasite evolution by taking into account the macroevolutionary history of the hosts. This paper shows that host switches at microevolutionary scales drive parasite diversification through ecological fitting mediated by historical compatibility among hosts. Historical compatibility may explain the capacity for host switching by the parasite based on traits conserved in closely related hosts. The model was validated against empirical data, and the results suggest that host switching is an important process that needs to be incorporated into a comprehensive framework to predict disease emergence. These results are helping us to propose strategies to anticipate and mitigate the risk of diseases associated with the presence and spread of pathogens. This paper's conclusions are included in the DAMA protocol and in the Stockholm paradigm framework (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo38871306.html).   more info: https://www.eeb.ucla.edu/news/?news=14094