Content by Dr. Nicole M. Gerardo

Dr. Nicole M. Gerardo is Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her lab’s focus is on the evolutionary ecology of interactions between microbes and hosts. They are  interested in how both beneficial and harmful microbes establish and maintain relationships with their hosts. Such associations are shaped by ecological limitations on host range, evolutionary trade-offs for both hosts and microbes, and host immunology. The lab combines genomic and experimental approaches to study these forces in diverse insect-microbe systems. To address these topics, they utilize the versatility of insect–microbe systems in which both the host insects and their associated microbes can be maintained in the laboratory.