Last year Bill Landesman, Alison Neal, Dagan Loisel, and I formed the Vermont Disease Ecology working group. This is a Vermont Genetics Network-funded group to support the research of its members. For the past two Julys we have had a day-long meeting for our students and us the opportunity to share our work. It is always a fun event, if you are interested in attending in the future please contact me!

Here were the talks from our July 2019 meeting:

• David Allen: Larval blacklegged tick phenology changes with elevation: implications for Lyme disease
• Dagan Loisel: Geographic variation and evolution of the anti-viral gene, APOBEC3Z3.
• Allison Neal: Division of labor in the trematode parasites.
• Cassidy Shaw: Melanoma epizootic in brown bullhead collected from Lake Memphremagog, VT.
• Bill Landesman: DNA-based host detection of Ixodes scapularis
• In the afternoon we had student presentations from the Allen, Loisel, and Neal labs.