Nikaela Flournoy
Miles College, AL·Earth & Environmental Science
Fecal bacteria in rivers and coastal waters signal sewage or animal waste pollution. They can close shellfish harvesting areas.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Microbiology & Immunology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
fecal indicator bacteria
microbial source tracking
water quality
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Identify the sources of fecal pollution entering surface waters of a coastal Alabama watershed using Microbial Source Tracking, which detects genetic markers specific to human or animal waste.
- Test whether Microbial Source Tracking markers and 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, a bacterial community profiling method, improve fecal indicator bacteria predictions in existing watershed models.
- Build machine learning-based watershed models that combine source-tracking, sequencing and environmental data to predict when fecal bacteria exceed total maximum daily load limits in shellfish growing waters.
More about the research
Regulators track fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), but counts alone do not show where the pollution comes from or when bacteria will exceed the total maximum daily load (TMDL), the legal pollution limit. This project asks what sources and environmental factors drive FIB patterns in surface water in a coastal Alabama watershed, and whether FIB levels can be predicted.
Why it matters
Fecal contamination closes shellfish waters and poses health risks to people who use coastal waters. Better predictions of when and from what source fecal bacteria will exceed safety limits could help water managers and shellfish growers in coastal Alabama act earlier. They could also target cleanup at the actual pollution sources.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Diana Tordoff
Stanford University, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Recruit a longitudinal cohort of peri-menopausal, early post-menopausal and late post-menopausal women and characterize how vaginal microbiota composition and taxonomic richness change after they start menopause treatments.
Yan Luo
University of Massachusetts-Lowell, MA·Engineering
Evaluate the sensitivity, specificity and stability of a patented biosensor for aquatic pathogens when deployed across varied coastal and aquaculture environments.
Sharon Bewick
Clemson University, SC·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether genetically identical parthenogenetic whiptail lizards (Aspidoscelis) show less individual-to-individual variation in gut and skin microbiota than their sexually reproducing, genetically diverse parent species, using 16S rRNA gene sequencing.
The school
Miles College: 1 labs on PI Pages.
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