Trash as habitat for disease hosts

Investigating whether anthropogenic debris creates habitat for freshwater snail hosts and changes local disease ecology.

Project angle

This project examines whether waste is not only a pollution problem, but also a potential ecological substrate that can shape host communities and disease-relevant habitat.

Methods and outputs

Field ecology
Community-engaged research
Snail-host habitat analysis
Waste, water, and environmental health framing

Publications / outputs

Plastic pollution reshapes snail intermediate host life history: implications for schistosomiasis transmission. Yu, Mitchell, Vannatta, De Leo. 2026.