Joseph Cook
University of New Mexico, NM·Ecology & Evolution
Natural history museums hold large collections of preserved wild mammals, from frozen tissues to specimens with records of where and when each animal was collected. These collections could reveal which viruses circulate in wild mammals long before any of them reach people.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Biology
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
virus discovery
viral diversity
host-virus coevolution
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Survey viral diversity across the mammal family tree by sequencing frozen museum tissues from nearly 600 species in 25 of 27 mammal orders, chosen to maximize evolutionary and geographic coverage.
- Test whether bats, rodents and primates are truly 'high risk' sources of viruses for humans by relating bioinformatically reconstructed viral sequences to host traits and host diversity.
- Sample virus-rich mammal lineages more intensively to study interactions between viruses and to test whether hosts and their viruses evolve together.
- Identify ecological and environmental traits linked to host switching by focusing on mammal-virus lineage pairs that show high rates of viruses jumping between species.
- Digitize and publish body and reproductive traits from about 1.2 million western North American mammal specimens held in 19 U.S. museums, making them searchable on iDigBio.
- Develop new data standards for mammal traits and extend existing software tools so that museum trait data are compatible with measurements from NEON.
More about the research
They can also show how mammal traits shift as environments change. Both of these multi-institution collaborative projects aim to turn museum mammal collections into data that researchers can search, connect and analyze.
Why it matters
A mammal-wide map of viral diversity could help identify which virus groups and host lineages pose higher or lower risk of spilling over to humans, and could support pathogen research in biodiverse countries where new diseases are more likely to emerge. Standardized trait data from more than a million specimens could give researchers better biodiversity baselines and better predictions of how mammals respond to changing environments.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Theodore Stankowich
California State University-Long Beach, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Digitize and publish morphological (body shape and size) and reproductive trait data from about 1.2 million non-marine mammal specimens from western North America, held in 19 U.S. natural history museums.
Eric Rickart
University of Utah, UT·Ecology & Evolution
Digitize morphological and reproductive traits, such as body measurements and breeding condition, from about 1.2 million non-marine mammal specimens from western North America across 19 U.S. museums.
Molly McDonough
Chicago State University, IL·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Recover orthopoxvirus genomes from historical and modern natural history museum specimens tied to smallpox, monkeypox, and Alaskapox outbreaks, using high-throughput sequencing and targeted enrichment of viral DNA.
The school
University of New Mexico: 27 labs on PI Pages, $355M a year on research, 182 research doctorates a year.
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