D. Becker

Optimizing predictive models to prioritize viral discovery in zoonotic reservoirs

This study compares and validates predictive models to prioritize sampling of bat hosts for betacoronaviruses, finding ecological trait-based models outperform network methods.

Ecological and evolutionary drivers of hemoplasma infection and bacterial genotype sharing in a Neotropical bat community

The paper examines hemoplasma infection prevalence and genetic diversity in Neotropical bats, finding high host specificity and phylogenetic constraints on bacterial sharing.

Dissecting the transcriptomic basis of phenotypic evolution in an aquatic keystone grazer

The paper maps gene co-expression networks to phosphorus-related traits in Daphnia across pre- and post-eutrophication environments, finding evolutionary fine-tuning of transcriptional responses and their link to physiological homeostasis.

Phylofactorization - a graph partitioning algorithm to identify phylogenetic scales of ecological data

This paper introduces Phylofactorization, a graph-partitioning algorithm to identify phylogenetic scales in ecological data, and demonstrates its application to mammalian body mass and gut microbiome studies.