News

News and events from the group.

Aniela Dexter at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology congress 2026

July 20-24th 2026

Aniela presented her talk "Food supplementation alters the daily activity rhythms of wild wood mice" at the ISBE congress in Turin.

Aniela speaking next to her presentation featuring the picture of a wood mouse and her talk title "Food supplementation alters the daily activity rhythms in wild wood mice"

Lab work with the Buck group

May 21st 2026

Big end of experiment day with the Buck lab! Everyone helped in the lab and we celebrated with some pizza!

  • Photo of several group members backs to the camera,, working a lab with microscopes wearing lab coats and blue gloves
  • Photo of 3 group members working in the lab with microscopes, wearing lab coats and blue gloves

Welcome to our Masters students Ben and Stuart

May 2026

We are excited to welcome Benjamin Aarhus and Stuart Farmer who are joining the lab for a Masters rotation project!

 

Congratulations to Amy Pedersen for becoming an Elected Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellow!

April 7th 2026

RSE Fellows 2026 

 

Eastbio PhD for Isabel

April 6th 2026

Congratulations to Isabel Entwistle for her EastBio PhD position! Isabel originally joined the team as a second year undergraduate intern in 2023, and is now our new PhD student starting September 2026. We are so excited!

Pedersen lab at ASAB

March 23rd - 25th 

Rhoslyn Howroyd and Aniela Dexter presented at the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour spring 2026 meeting in Bristol. Aniela talked about how “Food supplementation alters the daily activity rhythms of wild wood mice”, and Rhoslyn presented her poster on social network traits and superspreaders.

Photo of Rhoslyn Howroyd presenting at the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour spring 2026 meeting in Bristol

2025

White Elephant Christmas party at the lab! 

Dec 18th 2025 

Happy holidays!

Photo of the lab group members sitting in a circle around tables with pizza boxes and other food and drink around them

End of Isle of May fieldwork

Dec 2025 

That’s a wrap on fieldwork for the BBSRC wild ecoimmunology project on the Isle of May. Our team of professors, postdocs, PhD students, technicians, and volunteers from both Edinburgh and Manchester conducted 6 remote field seasons on the beautiful Isle of May. Well done on everyone’s hard work!

Close up photo of a wood mouse on a whitewashed wall

Pedersen lab at BES

Dec 15th - 18th 2025 

Andy and Alex presented posters at the British Ecological Society annual meeting in Edinburgh. Andy Dean’s poster was titled “Unpicking the relationships between host contact rates, infectiousness, and parasite superspreading” and Alexandra Vavrik’s poster was “The short- and long- term efficacy of anthelminthic treatment on parasite egg shedding in wild wood mice”. 

  • Photo of Alex presenting a poster at the British Ecological Society annual meeting in Edinburgh.
  • Photo of Andy and presenting a poster at the British Ecological Society annual meeting in Edinburgh.

Sam’s viva

Dec 11th 2025 

Congratulations to Sam Hillman on his viva for his thesis “Resource-mediated effects on wild wood mouse networks, behaviour, and demographics”!

Photo of Sam with three others standing in front of a blackboard with the word 'congratulations' written on it and colourful bunting along the top

End of superspreader fieldwork

Dec 2025 

That’s a wrap on fieldwork dedicated to our NERC Superspreader project! Thank you to all field assistants, interns, students, and volunteers who helped collect data across our two field seasons in 2024 and 2025. 

  • Photo of four fieldworkers standing in a celebratory pose in a wooded area with their samples
  • Photo of a fieldworker crouched under a tree in a wooded area, holding a clipboard with red dots on it
  • Photo of a fieldwork sitting by a tree and recording data on a handheld device
  • Photo of a fieldworker wearing a green hoodie and blue gloves holding up a fieldmouse for the camera
  • Close up photo of a fieldmouse being held by a gloved hand
  • Photo of a fieldworker wearing a green hoodie and blue gloves holding up a fieldmouse for the camera
  • YuPhoto of three research group members in a classroom, with desks and chairs working on black boxes used in their work
  • Photo of a group member sitting at a table working on a circuit board with a large black box sitting on the table in front of them
  • Photo of two fieldworkers one pushing, another pulling, a large cart on a gravely road near a fenced off grassy area
  • Photo of a fieldworker standing in a wooded area with a clipboard and pen
  • Close up photo of a fieldmouse being held by a gloved hand
  • Photo of four fieldworkers standing in front of and sitting on a fence, the sun in their faces and a snowy field behind
  • Group photo of the fieldworkers in a room with large windows overlooking trees
  • Photo of Alex ina hooded jacket wearing blue gloves holdoing up her hood, she's in a wooded are and has a bag and datasheets in a folder

Graduations!

Nov 19th 2025

Congratulations to Rivka and Agata for getting their PhDs, and congratulations to Sammy and Evan who got their MSc!

Photo of Rivka and Agata (with Amy) celebrating their graduations in graduation gowns

Pedersen lab at the University of Edinburgh doors open day 2025

Sept 27th 2025 

Rhoslyn, Leah and Nathan delivered our wood mouse drop-in activity at the University of Edinburgh doors open day in McEwan hall.

Photo of two lab group member in a lecture theatre witha table set up with props for University of Edinburgh doors open day 2025

Pedersen lab at Hydra

Sept 7th - 11th 2025

Olivia Fleming, Rhoslyn Howroyd, and Amy Pedersen attended the Hydra Helminth Conference 2025. Olivia presented her poster titled “The influence of dietary supplementation on the parasite community of wild wood mice”. Big congratulations to Rhoslyn for winning the best poster prize with her poster on how demographic traits correlate with superspreading and supercontacting! - her first ever poster at her first conference!

Rivka’s viva

Sept 2nd 2025

Celebrating Rivka Lim’s viva for her PhD “Epidemiological assessment of schistosomiasis: hotspots, morbidity, and transmission”! Congratulations!

Photo of Rivka with three others standing in front of a blackboard with the word 'congratulations' written on it and colourful bunting along the top

Pedersen lab at the Edinburgh Science Festival

April 15th - 18th 2025 

We developed a drop-in activity for the 2025 Edinburgh Science Festival! Participants could observe a variety of parasites under the microscope and handle our adorable crochet wood mice. Naturally, we had to include some clay droppings with colorful parasite eggs! We loved introducing children to the concept of parasites and data collection. 

Pedersen lab at the Falkirk Science Festival

May 10th 2025

Two group members wearing blue t shirts chat to kids, represent Pedersen lab at the Falkirk Science Festival

Agata’s viva

May 9th 2025

Congratulations Agata Delincka on your viva for your thesis “Ecological drivers of vector and vector-borne pathogen infections in small mammals”!

Photo of Agata with two others standing in front of a blackboard with the word 'congratulations' written on it and colourful bunting along the top
  • Pedersen of Alex wearing a yellow t-shirt standing behind a table full of props for Edinburgh Science festival
  • Photo of two group members in yellow t-shirts chatting with members of the public and showing them their props at the Edinburgh Science Festival
  • Photo of three group members in yellow t-shirts holding props and standing in front of a table of props for Edinburgh Science Festival

End of ageing project fieldwork

Dec 2024

That’s a wrap on fieldwork dedicated to our NERC Ageing project with Tom Little! Thank you to all field assistants, interns, students, and volunteers who helped collect data across our two field seasons in 2023 and 2024. 


  • Photo of a research group member in the lab, wearing a white coat and blue gloves, using a pippet
  • Photo of a fieldworker sitting working in a clearing in a wooded area, a brown and white spaniel sitting nearby
  • Photo of a fieldmouse on a log surrounded by moss and fallen leaves
  • Two fieldworkers in a clearing in a wooded area use a camera on the ground to take photos
  • Photo of Alex in the lab, in a lab coat and blue gloves, holding up a piece of transparent material in front of her
  • Photo of the project group members sitting at a table in a restaurant with large dishes of food on it

Two new papers by Dr Amy Sweeny !

26 January 2021

New papers!

Using complementary wild and laboratory populations of the same host-helminth system we show that nutrition supplementation increases resistance to helminths and efficacy of deworming.

Supplemented nutrition decreases helminth burden and increases drug efficacy in a natural host–helminth system

Nematode removal increased the prevalence of Sin Nombre virus (SNV) in its reservoir population, highlighting implications of parasite community interactions for the epidemiology of a zoonotic pathogen in the wild.

Experimental parasite community perturbation reveals associations between Sin Nombre virus and gastrointestinal nematodes in a rodent reservoir host

Pedersen Group at BES 2020

12 January 2021

The Pedersen group are attending the British Ecological Society annual conference 2020!

Check out our work:

  • Agata Delinicka Poster presentation "Fitness of parasitic gut nematode, Heligmosomoides polygyrus, in male and female wood mice"
  • Saudamini Venestan Talk " Factors driving variation in vaccine response in captive and wild wood mice"
  • Jess Hall Poster presentation "Deciphering the impact of nutritional quality on the dynamics and outcome of helminth- virus coinfections"
  • Amy Sweeny Talk "A mixed model approach for estimating drivers of microbiota community composition in wild animals" and who hosted the Thematic Session: Wild microbiomes: understanding the dynamics and consequences of host-microbe interactions under natural conditions

Pedersen Lab will be at the Midlothian Science festival

14 February 2019

Members of the Pedersen Lab will be at the Midlothian Science Festival on the 19th  October taking part in Science Alive.

We will be hunting for parasites in fake poo and fake blood! and pin the parasite on the mouse... fun for all ages

More information about the science festival

About us

25 January 2019

In natural systems, hosts are usually co-infected by multiple parasites, and many parasites can infect several host species. Our research on host-parasite interactions aims to incorporate this realistic, multiple host - multiple parasite/pathogen context. Specifically we (i) evaluate the competitive interactions that occur between co-infecting parasites and the immune response to understand rates of disease spread and their impact on host health; and (ii) strive to elucidate the factors that drive host shifts disease emergence in multi-host parasites.

We aim to tackle the one host - one parasite framework that dominates the study of disease ecology and evolution.

The Pedersen Group is part of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution, the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and the Institute of Immunity and Infection Research in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.


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