The Anthropology of Host-Pathogen Co-Evolution

Description:
This project examines the co-evolution of humans and our pathogens using an anthropological perspective that incorporates both evolutionary time depth, and short-term individual and species histories. Trends in host-pathogen relationships are analyzed using theory and data from ethnology and ethnohistory, human evolutionary ecology, archaeology, paleopathology, epidemiology, immunology, molecular and population genetics, primatology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Issues of particular concern are the emergence and maintenance of diseases in human and nonhuman primate populations, and factors contributing to variation in host susceptibility/resistance to infectious disease.