Lori Eggert, Ph.D.

Smithsonian Postdoctoral Researcher

As a conservation geneticist, the goal of my research is to provide information needed for effective management of declining species. I am particularly interested in the problems of managing secretive or dangerous animals. My PhD work at the University of California, San Diego, focused on the evolution and conservation of the African forest elephant. Using DNA extracted from dung samples, I developed a genetic censusing method for forest elephant populations. I also investigated the evolutionary relationships between forest and savanna elephant populations across west and central Africa. My work will have important implications for the conservation of forest elephants by providing the information needed to define Evolutionarily Significant Units (ESUs) for management and monitoring.

Most recently, I have become interested in the interface of conservation and disease. The introduction of avian malaria to Hawaii has contributed to the extinction of at least 10 native bird species. It has been implicated in the loss of honeycreepers from low elevation habitats where warm temperatures allow mosquitoes to breed. At higher elevations, where it is too cold for either the malaria parasite or its vector, honeycreepers and other species have thus far escaped massive losses. Field biologists have also observed a few individual native birds in low-lying areas where they should have been excluded by malaria, raising hopes that there may be either genetically resistant birds or less destructive strains of the parasite. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Genetics Program, I am contributing to a study of genetic variation in the birds and associations between malaria resistance and particular genotypes. I am also investigating the possibilities of less virulent malarial strains by looking at the geographic distribution of strains of Plasmodium and relating this to observed bird mortality rates.

Education:

PhD in Ecology Behavior and Evolution 2001, University of California, San Diego
MS in Ecology, 1996, San Diego State University
BS in Biology, 1992, University of California, San Diego

Selected Publications:

Eggert, L. 1996. A phylogeographic approach to management of coastal California cactus wrens (Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus). Masters thesis. San Diego State University.

Eggert, L. S., Beadell, J., McClung, A. and Fleischer, R. C. in prep. Evolution of microsatellites in the adaptive radiation of Hawaiian honeycreepers.

Eggert, L. S., Eggert, J. A. and Woodruff, D. S. in press. Censusing elusive animals: the forest elephants of Kakum National Park, Ghana. Molecular Ecology.

Eggert, L., Lux, C. A., O'Corry-Crowe, G. M. and Dizon, A. E. 1998. Dried dolphin blood on fishery observer records provides DNA for genetic analyses. Marine Mammal Science 14:136-143.

Eggert, L. S., Ramakrishnan, U., Mundy, N. I. and Woodruff, D. S. 2000. Polymorphic microsatellite DNA markers in the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) and their use in the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). Molecular Ecology 9:2223-2225.

Eggert, L. S., Rasner, C. A. and Woodruff, D. S. 2002. The evolution and phylogeography of the African elephant inferred from mitochondrial DNA sequence and nuclear microsatellite markers. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 269:1993-2006.

Eggert, L. S. and Woodruff, D. S. in prep. Phylogeography of the Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus) in southern California.

Eggert, L. S., Yenchi, A. and Fleischer, R. C. in prep. Censusing elephants in the forest/savanna ecotone: a comparison of analysis methods at Parc National de al Marahoué, Côte d’Ivoire.

Field, D, Eggert, L., Metzgar, D., Rose, R. and Wills, C. 1996. Use of polymorphic short and clustered coding-region microsatellites to distinguish strains of Candida albicans. FEMS Immunology and Medical Microbiology. 15:73-79.

Ryder, O., Eggert, L., Bowling, A., Zimmermann, W., Ballou, J., Thompson, E., Cooper, R. and Rieches, R. 1993. Asian Wild Horse (Equus przewalskii) captive management masterplan. Asian Wild Horse SSP, Przewalski’s Horse Global Management Plan Working Group, Przewalskipferd EEP. 39 pgs.

Srikwan, S., Hufford, K. Eggert, L. and Woodruff, D. S. 2002. Variable microsatellite markers for genotyping tree shrews, Tupaia, and their potential use in genetic studies of fragmented populations. ScienceAsia 28:93-97.