Kevin Lafferty
Biography
Dr. Kevin Lafferty's main interest lies in how parasites affect ecosystems and, in turn, how ecosystems affect parasites. He is also involved in research on the conservation of marine resources, investigating strategies for protecting endangered shorebirds, fish and abalone. He has also assessed the effects of marine reserves.
Dr. Lafferty received his Ph. D. in Ecological Parasitology in 1991 at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and took a post doc with the National Marine Sanctuary and a research position at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is presently a Marine Ecologist for the USGS at the Channel Islands Field Station. As a UCSB adjunct faculty member, the university's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology generously provides for Dr. Lafferty's office and laboratory space in the Marine Lab. He advises graduate students in Marine Ecology, but has no formal teaching assignments.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Conservation biology
- Invasive species ecology
- Nearshore marine ecology
- Parasite ecology
- Wetland ecology
EDUCATION
- Ph.D., Ecology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 1991
- M.A., Zoology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 1988
- B.A., Aquatic Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 1985
PROFESSIONAL AND HONORARY SOCIETIES AND SCIENCE ADVISORY COMMITTEES
- Amercian Society of Parasitologists
- American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists
- California Botanical Society
- Ecological Society of America
- Natural Areas Association
- Western Society of Naturalists
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
- Marine Ecologist, USGS, Western Ecological Science Center, Jul 1998-Present
- Assistant Adj. Prof., UCSB, Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, Jul 1998-Present
- Assist. Research Biologist, UCSB Marine Science Institute, Jun 1996-Jul 1998
- Assist. Research Biologist, UCLA, Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Jun 1994-Jul 1998
- Assist. Research Biologist, UCSB, Marine Science Institute, Jan 1993-May 1994
- Post Doctoral Researcher, National Marine Sanctuaries Program, Jan 1992-Dec 1992
Science and Products
Monogenea of fishes from the lagoon flats of Palmyra Atoll in the Central Pacific
A survey of the monogeneans of fishes from the lagoon flats of Palmyra Atoll detected 16 species already reported from the Indo-West Pacific faunal region. A total of 653 individual fish from 44 species were collected from the sand flats bordering the lagoon of the atoll. Eighteen species of fish were infected with monogeneans. The monogenean...
Vidal-Martínez, Víctor Manuel; Soler-Jiménez, Lilia Catherinne; Aguirre-Macedo, Ma. Leopoldina; Mclaughlin, John; Jaramillo, Alejandra G.; Shaw, Jenny C.; James, Anna; Hechinger, Ryan F.; Kuris, Armand M.; Lafferty, Kevin D. Marine infectious disease ecology
To put marine disease impacts in context requires a broad perspective on the roles infectious agents have in the ocean. Parasites infect most marine vertebrate and invertebrate species, and parasites and predators can have comparable biomass density, suggesting they play comparable parts as consumers in marine food webs. Although some parasites...
Lafferty, Kevin D. Facultative parasitism by the bivalve Kurtiella pedroana in the sand crab Emerita analoga
It is rare that an organism capable of independent or commensalistic existence can also become endoparasitic on a host. In this study, we documented a potential step toward parasitism in the commensal clam Kurtiella pedroana (Bivalvia: Galeommatoidea). Galeommatoideans are known commensals of various invertebrates, including crustaceans. Emerita...
Bhaduri, Ritin; Valentich-Scott, Paul; Hilgers, Mark; Singh, Rajvir; Hickman, Mikaila; Lafferty, Kevin D. Seroprevalence of Baylisascaris procyonis infection among humans, Santa Barbara County, California, USA, 2014–2016
Baylisascaris procyonis (raccoon roundworm) infection is common in raccoons and can cause devastating pathology in other animals, including humans. Limited information is available on the frequency of asymptomatic human infection. We tested 150 adults from California, USA, for B. procyonis antibodies; 11 were seropositive,...
Weinstein, Sara B.; Lake, Camille M.; Chastain, Holly M.; Fisk, David; Handali, Sukwan; Kahn, Philip L.; Montgomery, Susan P.; Wilkins, Patricia P.; Kuris, Armand M.; Lafferty, Kevin D.
Grand challenges for integrated USGS science—A workshop report
Executive SummaryThe U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has a long history of advancing the traditional Earth science disciplines and identifying opportunities to integrate USGS science across disciplines to address complex societal problems. The USGS science strategy for 2007–2017 laid out key challenges in disciplinary and interdisciplinary arenas,...
Jenni, Karen E.; Goldhaber, Martin B.; Betancourt, Julio L.; Baron, Jill S.; Bristol, R. Sky; Cantrill, Mary; Exter, Paul E.; Focazio, Michael J.; Haines, John W.; Hay, Lauren E.; Hsu, Leslie; Labson, Victor F.; Lafferty, Kevin D.; Ludwig, K.A.; Milly, Paul C. D.; Morelli, Toni L.; Morman, Suzette A.; Nassar, Nedal T.; Newman, Timothy R.; Ostroff, Andrea C. ; Read, Jordan S.; Reed, Sasha C.; Shapiro, Carl D.; Smith, Richard A.; Sanford, Ward E.; Sohl, Terry L.; Stets, Edward G.; Terando, Adam J.; Tillitt, Donald E.; Tischler, Michael A.; Toccalino, Patricia L.; Wald, David J.; Waldrop, Mark P.; Wein, Anne; Weltzin, Jake F.; Zimmerman, Christian E. Nearly 400 million people are at higher risk of schistosomiasis because dams block the migration of snail-eating river prawns
Dams have long been associated with elevated burdens of human schistosomiasis, but how dams increase disease is not always clear, in part because dams have many ecological and socio-economic effects. A recent hypothesis argues that dams block reproduction of the migratory river prawns that eat the snail hosts of schistosomiasis. In the Senegal...
Sokolow, Susanne H.; Jones, Isabel J.; Jocque, Merlijn M. T.; La, Diana; Cords, Olivia; Knight, Anika; Lund, Andrea; Wood, Chelsea L.; Lafferty, Kevin D.; Hoover, Christopher M.; Collender, Phillip A.; Remais, Justin V.; Lopez-Carr, David; Fisk, Jonathan; Kuris, Armand M.; De Leo, Giulio A. Conservation, biodiversity and infectious disease: scientific evidence and policy implications
Habitat destruction and infectious disease are dual threats to nature and people. The potential to simultaneously advance conservation and human health has attracted considerable scientific and popular interest; in particular, many authors have justified conservation action by pointing out potential public health benefits . One major focus of this...
Young, Hillary S.; Wood, Chelsea L.; Kilpatrick, A. Marm; Lafferty, Kevin D.; Nunn, Charles L.; Vincent, Jeffrey R. Human infectious disease burdens decrease with urbanization but not with biodiversity
nfectious disease burdens vary from country to country and year to year due to ecological and economic drivers. Recently, Murray et al. (Murray CJ et al. 2012 Lancet 380, 2197–2223. (doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61689-4)) estimated country-level morbidity and mortality associated with a variety of factors, including infectious diseases, for the years...
Wood, Chelsea L.; McInturff, Alex; Young, Hillary S.; Kim, DoHyung; Lafferty, Kevin D. Host density increases parasite recruitment but decreases host risk in a snail-trematode system
Most species aggregate in local patches. High host density in patches increases contact rate between hosts and parasites, increasing parasite transmission success. At the same time, for environmentally-transmitted parasites, high host density can decrease infection risk to individual hosts, because infective stages are divided among all hosts in a...
Buck, Julia C; Hechinger, R.F.; Wood, A.C.; Stewart, T.E.; Kuris, A.M.; Lafferty, Kevin D. Molecular analyses reveal high species diversity of trematodes in a sub-Arctic lake
To identify trematode diversity and life-cycles in the sub-Arctic Lake Takvatn, Norway, we characterised 120 trematode isolates from mollusc first intermediate hosts, metacercariae from second intermediate host fishes and invertebrates, and adults from fish and invertebrate definitive hosts, using molecular techniques. Phylogenies based on nuclear...
Soldánová, Miroslava; Georgieva, Simona; Roháčováa, Jana; Knudsen, Rune; Kuhn, Jesper A.; Henriksen, Eirik H.; Siwertsson, Anna; Shaw, Jenny C.; Kuris, Armand M.; Amundsen, Per-Arne; Scholz, Tomáš; Lafferty, Kevin D.; Kostadinova, Aneta A life cycle database for parasitic acanthocephalans, cestodes, and nematodes
Parasitologists have worked out many complex life cycles over the last ~150 years, yet there have been few efforts to synthesize this information to facilitate comparisons among taxa. Most existing host-parasite databases focus on particular host taxa, do not distinguish final from intermediate hosts, and lack parasite life-history information. We...
Benesh, Daniel P.; Lafferty, Kevin D.; Kuris, Armand Carpinteria salt marsh habitat polygons
We identified five common habitat types in Carpinteria Salt Marsh: channels, pans (flats), marsh, salt flat and upland. We then drew polygons around each habitat type identified from a registered and orthorectified aerial photograph and created a GIS shapefile. Polygons were ground-truthed in the field. From these habitat polygons, one can...
Lafferty, Kevin D.; Dunham, Eleca J.; Mancini, Frank T.; Stewart, Tara E.; Hechinger, Ryan F.