DuRant Lab
Physiology|Parental Effects|Disease
Lake Lincoln, Arkansas
Meet the members of the DuRant Lab!
Sarah DuRant, PhD
sedurant@uark.edu; 479-575-6364
I completed my Master's in 2006 and PhD in 2011 at Virginia Tech, then spent two years as a post doc at Tufts University. For 3.5 years I was faculty at Oklahoma State before joining the Dept. of Biological Sciences at University of Arkansas. My research focuses on animal responses to environmental stimuli, with particular focus on parental effects, disease ecology, and environmental temperature.
Erin Sauer, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow, esauer@uark.edu;
I’m interested in understanding how changes host behavior after disease exposure impact disease outcomes. During my PhD at the University of South Florida, I studied the role of host thermoregulatory behavior in bolstering amphibian host resistance to two pathogens contributing to global population declines (Ranavirus and Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or Bd). I am currently investigating how parental disease history impacts parental behavior and subsequent offspring immune phenotypes in the avian mycoplasmal conjunctivitis system.
View Erin's website here
Will Kirkpatrick
PhD student; whkirkpa@uark.edu
Will is a fervent Tennesee Vol's fan and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. His work focuses on temperature's role in shaping avian breeding behavior. Using a nest box system in Eastern Bluebird he's studying how temperature variability shapes parental care behaviors.
View Will's website here
Sarah Heissenberger
PhD student; sheissen@uark.edu
Sarah is a New Hampshire native who completed her undergraduate degree at Keene State College. In Fall 2022, she was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Sarah’s research focuses on the interactions between metabolism, stress, water availability, and social behavior in the common degu, a rodent native to central Chile. Sarah is co-advised by Dr. Carolyn Bauer at Swarthmore University
Madeline Sudnick
MS student; mcsudnic@uark.edu
Madeline completed her undergraduate degree at Ohio University. Madeline's research investigates transmission dynamics in the he avian mycoplasmal conjunctivitis system.
Chloe Connelly
Honors Undergraduate Researcher
Chloe is working on her honors thesis with Dr. Erin Sauer studying sex differential immunity in the avian mycoplasmal conjunctivitis system. She has also been involved in organizing the Bird Safe Glass Initiative at the University of Arkansas with Dr. Sauer. She plans to attend medical school in the Fall of 2023.
Sakura Roberts
Honors Undergraduate Researcher
Sakura is working on her honors thesis with Dr. Erin Sauer studying the effects of disease history on maternal provisioning behavior in the avian mycoplasmal conjunctivitis system. She has also been involved in organizing the Bird Safe Glass Initiative at the University of Arkansas with Dr. Sauer.
Past Lab Members
Chris Goodchild, PhD
PhD student; cgoodchild@uco.edu
Chris graduated from Oklahoma University, then completed an MS at the University of New England and a PhD at Oklahoma State University. Chris’ research investigated the physiological effects of sublethal crude oil exposure in an avian model system to establish mechanistic links between subcellular indicators and ecologically relevant effects (e.g., whole-animal fitness, population-level endpoints). Chris was a postdoc in Kendra Sewall's lab at Virginia Tech and is now an Assistant Professor at University of Central Oklahoma.
Visit Chris' website here
Ashley Love, PhD
PhD student and Postdoc; ashley.love@uconn.edu
Ashley completed her undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech and her PhD at Oklahoma State University. Ashley's research focused on the importance of behavior in shaping individual and offspring immune responses. Ashley recently received an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to work with Dr. Sarah Knutie at UConn.
View Ashley's website here
Weston Perrine
MS student; wgperrin@uark.edu
Weston completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Nebraska. Weston's research investigated the importance of diet in shaping individual responses to disease (e.g., recovery time, disease severity). He used a laboratory canary-MG host-pathogen system. He is currently a visiting instructor at the University of Arkansas.
Coleen Weist
Honors Undergraduate Researcher
Emma is a senior Biology major and Medical Humanities minor who has worked in the lab since Fall 2018. She is working on her Honors Thesis with Ashley Love investigating the relationship between maternal infection and antibody investment to offspring. Emma was awarded an Honors Research Grant and will defend her thesis in the spring of 2021. Emma will begin medical school after her 2021 graduation.
Jahnavi Kodali
Honors Undergraduate Researcher
Jahnavi began working in the lab as a Junior with Ashley Love to study immune-behavior trade-offs that offspring experience in response to maternal disease. She successfully defended her thesis Spring 2021 and recently earned a position with Dana Farber and Cedar Sinai Applied Genomics, Computational & Translational Core. She plans to pursue graduate school in the future.
Wayne Hawkins
Undergraduate Researcher
Wayne developed NestIQ, a program that uses machine learning to identify avian on- and off-bouts in thermal datasets collected from avian nests. You can download the program at https://github.com/wxhawkins/NestIQ. His manuscript is currently in review. Wayne is now pursuing a graduate careeer at U Michigan.
Anna Smith
Wentz fellow and Freshman Research Scholar
Anna is a Physiology major who started working in the lab her first semester on campus. She's been involved with numerous projects, won a Best Presentation award at the Karen L Smith Undergraduate Research Symposia, presented at the Animal Behavior meeting in Toronto, Canada, and received a Wentz Research Scholarship. Anna is currently exploring behavioral and immunological changes in social birds exposed to sick conspecifics. She's now in PT school.
Jeff Krall
Goldwater and Niblack Fellow
Jeff started working in the lab as a Freshmen. Jeff explored the bioenergetic consequences of exposure to crude oil using a bird model organism. Jeff has received several Best Presentation awards at local and national meetings. Jeff is also the recipient of the prestigious National Goldwater Fellowship and a Niblack Scholarship. Jeff is a grad student at Colorado St. University.
Kevin Grisham
Undergraduate Researcher
Kevin has been a jack-of-all-trades in the lab and has worked with birds, snakes and snails. Kevin completed an independent research project investigating the behavioral effects of exposure to waste water treatment facility effluent in snails. Kevin was recently accepted into Veterinary School at Oklahoma State University. He will be sorely missed!
Lauren Schmidt
Wentz Fellow
Lauren worked on her Honor's Thesis with Chris Goodchild investigating whether personality predicts behavioral and morphological responses to predators in snails. Lauren was the recipient of a Wentz Research Grant!
Past Summer Undergraduate Researchers
Destiny Guillory
NSF REU
Destiny is an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas - Pine Bluff. She worked with the DuRant lab during the Summer of 2022 studying the effect of maternal disease severity on the transfer of antibodies to offspring. She will be presenting her research at the 2023 SICB conference in Austin, TX.
Christopher Carter
NSF REU
Chris is an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas - Pine Bluff. He worked with the DuRant lab during the Summer of 2022 studying sex-biased trade-offs between growth and immunocompetence in Eastern Bluebird hatchlings. He will be presenting his research at the 2023 SICB conference in Austin, TX.
Mimi Tran
NSF REU
Mimi worked as an NSF REU student with me at Tufts University in the summer of 2012, while she was an undergraduate student at Univ. of Texas, Austin. After graduating, Mimi attended Vet school at the University of Wisconsin. Project title: Does life history stage affect the energetic costs of stress?
Current Collaborators
Jen Grindstaff, Oklahoma State University
Ryan Paitz, Illinois State University
Jessica Hite, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Brett DeGregorio, University of Arkansas
JD Willson, University of Arkansas
Jeffrey Lewis, University of Arkansas
Amanda Carter, University of Tennessee
Carolyn Bauer, Swarthmore University
William Hopkins, Virginia Tech
Michael Romero, Tufts University
Gary Hepp, Auburn University
Noha Youssef, Oklahoma State University
Shawn Wilder, Oklahoma State University