June 24, 2020
Odum School alumnus Daniel Becker, PhD ’17, was named the winner of the 2020 Sidnie Manton Award by the British Ecological Society. The award, established in 2018, recognizes the best review article in the Journal of Animal Ecology by an early career researcher. Becker is the second recipient.

Currently a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University, Becker received the award for his paper Macroimmunology: The drivers and consequences of spatial patterns in wildlife immune defence.

In a press release about the prize, Lesley Lancaster, the journal’s senior editor, noted the paper’s relevance to the current pandemic.

“Understanding drivers of disease may lead to better predictions and management of this and future pandemics. However, an integrative and synthetic approach to tackling these issues is often lacking, which has led some ecologists to call for the development of a broader field of global disease ecology. The ideas outlined in this winning paper are a step towards this goal,” said Lancaster.

Read more: Daniel Becker wins the British Ecological Society’s Sidnie Manton Award