Sonia Altizer

Early life

Altizer was born as the daughter of Jim and Chris Altizer of Watkinsville, Georgia. Her passion for biology and the natural world began when she received a gift of a microscope and a grown-your-own-butterflies kit on her twelfth birthday.

Education

Altizer received a B.S. from Duke University in 1992 and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and in 1998. She also did a postdoctoral work at Princeton University and Cornell University.

Career

For 20 years since a graduate student of the University of Minnesota, Altizer traveled the world to study monarch butterfly migration, ecology, and interactions with a protozoan parasite. She has researched how seasonal migration of these butterflies affects parasite transmission, and also developed collaborative databases of mammalian infectious diseases, on host behavior, ecology, and life history interact with global-scale patterns of parasitism. She also focused her research on songbird-pathogen dynamics, including studies of house finch conjunctivitis, West Nile virus, and salmonellosis. Altizer has published several publications and she recently co-edited a book that would be published in 2015, titled Monarchs in a Changing World: Biology and Conservation of an Iconic Insect. She also and participated in high-level task forces dedicated to monarch butterfly conservation. A citizen science project called Monarch Health is run by her students at University of Georgia, which is now the 8th year. There are hundreds of volunteers across North America in sampling wild monarchs for a debiliating disease.

Research areas

Altizer's research interests are ecology of infectious diseases in natural populations, evolution of host resistance and parasite virulence, insect ecology and evolution, animal migrations, and anthropogenic change and infectious disease dynamics.

Personal life

When Altizer is not on campus or traveling for work, she rides on her horse in rural Watkinsville with her husband, with whom she has one son.

Publications

1. 2014 Rushmore, J., Caillaud, D., Hall, R.J., Stumpf, R.M., Meyers, L.A. and Altizer, S. Network-based vaccination improves prospects for disease control in wild chimpanzees. Journal of the Royal Society Interface. 11(97), 20140349
2. 2013 Altizer, S., Ostfeld, R.S., Harvell, C.D., Johnson, P.T.J., and Kutz, S. Climate change and infectious disease: from evidence to a predictive framework. Science. 341: 514-519.
3. 2013 Rushmore, J., D. Caillaud, L. Matamba, R. M. Stumpf, S. P. Borgatti, and S. Altizer. Social network analysis of wild chimpanzees with insights for infectious disease risk. Journal of Animal Ecology, 82: 976-986.
4. 2012 Streicker, D.G., Recuenco, S., Valderrama, W., Gomez-Benavides, J., Vargas, I., Pacheco, V., Condori, R.E, Montgomery, J., Rupprecht, C.E., Rohani, P. and Altizer, S. Ecological and anthropogenic drivers of rabies exposure in vampire bats: implications for transmission and control. Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B. 279(1742):3384-92.
5. 2011 Altizer, S., Han, B and Bartel, R. Animal migrations and infectious disease risk. Science. 331: 296-302
6. 2010 Altizer, S., and Davis, A.K. Populations of monarch butterflies with different migratory behaviors show divergence in wing morphology. Evolution. In Press.
7. 2010 DeRoode, JC and Altizer, S. Host-parasite genetic interactions and virulence-transmission relationships in natural populations of monarch butterflies. Evolution. In press.
8. 2009 Harvell, C.D., Altizer, S., Cattadori, I., Harrington, L. and Weil, E. Climate change and wildlife diseases: when does the host matter the most? Ecology. 90: 912-920.
9. 2008 De Roode, J.C., Yates, A.J. and Altizer, S. Virulence-transmission trade-offs and population divergence in virulence in a naturally-occurring butterfly parasite. PNAS. 105: 7489-7494
10. 2008 Bradley, C.A., Gibbs, S.E.J. and Altizer, S. Urban land use predicts West Nile virus exposure in songbirds. Ecological applications. 18: 1083–1092

Honors and awards