The Nunn Lab

Climate change is having both direct and indirect impacts on Madagascar’s rural populations, who are primarily small-holder farmers engaged in subsistence agriculture. One of the primary ways this population is addressing climate-induced food insecurity is by selling livestock, which requires travel from their rural villages to more central markets via the taxi brousse (bush taxi) system. This process entails placing livestock into crowded spaces, either on a taxi brousse (for travel) or in markets (for sale), leading to potential viral mixing and the emerging of panzootic and/or pandemic diseases.  Charles Nunn, Gavin Smith and Mark Janko will explore these potential transmission paths in a new pilot grant funded by Duke University and Duke-NUS Medical School.  Read more about this and other projects advancing research related to climate change here.

Learn more about Charlie Nunn’s research journey in Madagascar in this recent news article.

Charlie Nunn and students visit with community members near Marojejy National Park in Madagascar’s Sava region.

Tyler Barrett led a paper on network analysis insights to Blastocystis infection in Madagascar, supported through our NIH and NSF research.  Congratulations, Tyler!

Lev Kolinski led a paper on “How Market Integration Impacts Human Disease Ecology.”  You can find it here.  Congrats, Lev, and co-authors Tyler Barrett and Randy Kramer!