M. Eric Benbow

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Professor, Aquatic & Forensic Entomology
Department of Entomology

Bio

I am a community ecologist, studying how complex communities (e.g., aquatic or carrion insects or microbes) contribute to ecological systems and can understanding these communities can be used in various applications in medicine, disease and environmental management. One of the largest community ecology studies related to human health has been the Human Microbiome Project that showed that much of the human body is made up of a wide diversity of prokaryotic cells and that these communities have significant importance to human health. In a related fashion within entomology, my lab asks three general questions: 1) Is insect fitness influenced by the community of microbes living in or on them?; 2) What are the ecological interactions of insects with the microbial communities associated with their habitat or food resources?; and, 3) How can this information be used to inform resources management, human health and forensics? With a joint appointment in the College of Osteopathic Medicine, my lab seeks to answer these insect-microbe questions for translation into human health applications. Given the rich history of research in insect-microbe interactions that has focused on vectoring pathogens and co-evolved symbionts, coupled with the advanced ability to identify culturable and non-culturable bacteria using high throughput sequencing, a new generation of inquiry into the importance of the insect microbiome and their interactions in nature has tremendous potential for insect science. It is within this realm of inquiry where my students and I test explicit hypotheses at the individual, population and community levels to better understand the importance of insect-microbe interactions to the ecology and evolution of carrion, aquatic biology, forensics and disease systems. The research in my lab centers on the applied ecology of insect–microbial interactions within three systems: carrion decomposition (and forensics), aquatic ecological networks and disease systems.

Concentrations

Aquatic Entomology and Disease Ecology
Insect-Microbe Interactions
Microbiome Ecosystems Ecology
Decomposition Ecology and Forensics

Courses Taught

Research

The research in my lab focusing on carrion decomposition (and forensics), aquatic ecological networks and disease systems has been funded by nationally competitive, regional and local grants. The impact of the latest grant that was funded resulted in several media interviews. Publications have been in several high profile journals including Trends in Ecology and Evolution, the Annual Review of Entomology, Ecological Monographs, Scientific Reports, Environmental Microbiology and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. In addition to these publications, my lab continues to produce collaborative peer reviewed publications in excellent journals such as Animal Behavior, Freshwater Biology and Environmental Research Letters, in addition to mainstream entomological journals such as the Journal of Medical Entomology, Ecological Entomology and Environmental Entomology. The annual citation rate continues to increase (see Google Scholar as example: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IKRkWHgAAAAJ&hl=en).