Jessica’s work focuses on the ecology of infectious diseases in wild animals. Jess has a special interest in vector borne diseases, which began in her undergraduate studies and continued into a PhD project. She explored the veterinary and public health risk of Lyme disease in the UK, along with side projects that studies other vector borne diseases in ticks from wildlife and pets. After her PhD she worked on a project looking at co-infection of infectious diseases of wild wood mice and how the availability of nutrition affects the host-pathogen and pathogen-pathogen interactions. As part of the MEaSURE project, Jess will be surveying selected sites throughout the UK for ticks and for signs of wildlife. She will then analyse this data to understand what creates a “ticky” environment and how this could impact on animal and human disease risk.