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Alexander D Hernandez
Study systems include
Helminth parasite communities in wild fish, rabbits and monkeys
Selected publications
Hernandez AD, Poole A, Cattadori IM (in press) Climate changes influence free-living stages of soil transmitted parasites of European rabbits. Global Change Biology DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12106
MacIntosh AJJ, Jacobs, A, Garcia C, Shimizu K, Mouri K, Huffman MA, Hernandez AD (2012) Monkeys in the middle: parasite transmission through the social network of wild Japanese macaques. PLoS ONE 7: e51144
MacIntosh AJJ, Hernandez AD and Huffman MA (2010) Host age, sex, and reproductive seasonality affect nematode parasitism in wild Japanese macaques. Primates 51:353–364
Hernandez AD, MacIntosh AJ and Huffman MA (2009) Primate parasite ecology: patterns and predictions from an on-going study of Japanese macaques. Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology 57: 387-401
Hernandez AD and Sukhdeo MVK (2008) Parasites alter the topology of a stream food web across seasons. Oecologia 156: 613-624
Hernandez AD and Sukhdeo MVK (2008) Parasite effects on isopod feeding rates can alter the host’s functional role in a natural stream ecosystem. International Journal for Parasitology 38: 683-690
Hernandez AD, Bunnell JF and Sukhdeo MVK (2007) Composition and diversity patterns in metazoan parasite communities and anthropogenic disturbance in stream ecosystems. Parasitology 134: 91-102
Research interests
I study the ecology of parasites in wildlife populations. I am particularly interested in understanding the role that parasites play in food webs, and in the synthesis between ecology and the evolution of diseases.
My studies have explored the effects of parasites on the structure and dynamics of food webs in stream ecosystems of the New Jersey Pinelands.
Recently I also focused on the dynamics of parasite populations that infect wild macaque monkeys and the dung-feeding beetles that they eat on Yakushima Island, Japan.
Presently at CIDD I am collaborating on a project that uses a combination of laboratory and field experiments to examine the effects of climate change on the transmission dynamics of nematode parasites in wild European rabbit hosts in Scotland.
The unifying theme of my research projects is:
- Measuring the direct and indirect costs that parasites have on host populations and the communities of which they are a part
- Elucidating how changes to food web structure and natural enemy associations affect the evolution of parasite transmission strategies
