Richard Birtles

My work explores the strategies adopted by infectious agents, at the individual and population level, to persist in nature, in particular those microorganisms that are arthropod transmitted. These efforts have centred on organisms of public health and veterinary importance, including the tick-transmitted Borrelia and Anaplasma species, and flea and louse-transmitted members of the bacterial genus Bartonella. Recent/ongoing projects include examination of the adaptation of A. phagocytophilum and B. burgdorferi strains to specific transmission pathways within natural multi-host, multi-vector system, quantification of genome-wide diversity within Bartonella species, and exploration of the molecular basis of arthropod exploitation by Bartonella species. I also have a slow-burning interest in the role of amoeba and other free-living protists as environmental hosts for pathogens. I also like to trawl the blood-steam of animals from near and distant corners of the planet in search of new haemoparasitic bacteria and protozoa; please get in touch if you can help out!

I have been lucky enough to be part of a long-standing collaborative team, including scientists at the Universities of Aberdeen, Liverpool and Nottingham, interested in infectious disease ecology and using a model system of wild field vole (Microtus agrestis) populations to explore the influence of parasites on host population dynamics and host susceptibility to co-infectors, and the strategies adopted by hosts to counter parasitism.