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Michelle is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Meghan Duffy’s lab at the University of Michigan Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. In her postdoc, Michelle is using the freshwater zooplankton, Daphnia, model system to investigate how resource quality and parasite infection influences host physiology, and the role of the host community and environment on patterns of multi-parasite epidemics in lakes. Michelle completed her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan in 2020. In her dissertation work with her PhD advisor Elizabeth Tibbetts, Michelle studied how community dynamics, the environment, and host interactions impact variation in virus prevalence of honey bees and native bees.
Michelle received her Bachelor’s of Science in Biology, specializing in Ecology and Evolution, and a minor in Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation in 2013 at University of California Davis. As an undergraduate student, Michelle worked on several different research projects as she explored her research interests. Most notably, she worked in Maureen Stanton’s lab with Anne Marie Panetta studying local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity responses of alpine Rock Jasmine to warming climates through greenhouse common garden experiments. Post-graduation, Michelle worked at the Western Ecological Research Center of the United States Geological Survey with Peter Coates as a research technician studying population dynamics of Ring-Necked Pheasants, Snowy Egrets, and Black-Crowned Night-Herons, and the biotic and abiotic factors affecting nesting and incubation behavior of Greater Sage-Grouse.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Ecology of multi-host pathogens, community ecology, effects of environmental and landscape change on disease dynamics, structural equation modeling, host interaction networks for pathogen transmission, conservation biology, behavioral ecology, and co-infections.
Contact Information
Email: mlfearon@umich.edu
Twitter: @MichelleLFearon
