Britt Koskella is an associate professor at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, USA. She studies

evolutionary biology Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life fo ...

, specialising in host-pathogen relationships.

Education

Britt Koskella was an undergraduate at

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

, initially studying psychology. Part-time work as a technician with the research group of

Janis Antonovics Janis Antonovics FRS ( lv, Jānis Antonovics; born 1942 in Riga, Reichskommissariat Ostland) is an American biologist, and Lewis and Clark Professor of Biology, at University of Virginia. Life He was educated at Gravesend Grammar School (1953- ...

, where she saw experimental evolution laboratory studies of the movement of a plant pathogen between species, changed the direction of her degree and became the foundation of her research interests. She was awarded the degree of Ph. D. by the

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana University and, with ...

in 2008 for research on the role of parasites in host sexual reproduction and diversity, supervised by Curtis Lively. This involved the

New Zealand mud snail The New Zealand mud snail (''Potamopyrgus antipodarum'') is a species of very small freshwater snail with a gill and an operculum. This aquatic gastropod mollusk is in the family Tateidae. It is native to New Zealand, where it is found through ...

and its

trematode Trematoda is a class of flatworms known as flukes. They are obligate internal parasites with a complex life cycle requiring at least two hosts. The intermediate host, in which asexual reproduction occurs, is usually a snail. The definitive host ...

parasite.

Career

Her research makes use of

bacteriophage A bacteriophage (), also known informally as a ''phage'' (), is a duplodnaviria virus that infects and replicates within bacteria and archaea. The term was derived from "bacteria" and the Greek φαγεῖν ('), meaning "to devour". Bacteri ...

bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among ...

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...

systems to investigate host-pathogen co-evolution. It involves both field, molecular and laboratory experiments. After gaining her doctorate she held a fellowship until 2011 to collaborate with Angus Buckling at

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, UK and

John Thompson John Thompson may refer to: Academics * J. A. Thompson (1913–2002), Australian biblical scholar * John D. Thompson (1917–1992), nurse and professor at the Yale School of Public Health * John G. Thompson (born 1932), American mathematician * ...

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

in studies of the interactions between plants, bacteria and bacteriophage. She then held further fellowships at the

University of Exeter The University of Exeter is a public university , public research university in Exeter, Devon, England, United Kingdom. Its predecessor institutions, St Luke's College, Exeter School of Science, Exeter School of Art, and the Camborne School of Min ...

from 2011 until 2015. In 2015 she was appointed to a post as associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2021 she was awarded the

Fleming Prize Lecture The Fleming Prize Lecture was started by the Microbiology Society in 1976 and named after Alexander Fleming, one of the founders of the society. It is for early career researchers, generally within 12 of being awarded their PhD, who have an outs ...

by the

Microbiology Society The Microbiology Society (previously the Society for General Microbiology) is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with a worldwide membership based in universities, industry, hospitals, research institutes and schools. It is the large ...

Publications

Koskella is the author or co-author of over 70 scientific publications and book chapters. These include: * Britt Koskella, Lindsay J. Hall and C. Jessica E. Metcalf (2017
The microbiome beyond the horizon of ecological and evolutionary theory.
''Nature Ecology & Evolution'' 1 1606–1615 * B. Koskella (2013) Phage-mediated selection on microbiota of a long-lived host. ''Curr Biol'' 23 1256–1260. * B. Koskella, and C.M. Lively. (2009
Evidence for negative frequency-dependent selection during experimental coevolution of a freshwater snail and a sterilizing trematode.
''Evolution'' 63 2213-2221

Personal life

Koskella is married. The couple has two children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Koskella, Britt Living people Evolutionary biologists Microbiologists Indiana University Bloomington alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty Year of birth missing (living people)