Jen Owen Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences
B.S. University of Montana, Missoula, 1993
Ph.D. The University of Southern Mississippi, 2004Research interests: disease ecology, ecological immunology, behavioral ecology, avian migration
Link to Flyer: Jen Owen
Are migratory birds really to blame for the spread of infectious disease? And, how do we investigate it?
Professor Jen Owen’s research overall looks at the role of different species in the spread of disease and viruses with a goal of hopefully being able to prevent the spread of pathogens that are transferable to humans. She mainly focuses on birds and looking at the differences between migratory and non-migratory birds and their pathogenic shedding. There are a few different components of her research that all hope to answer this overall question.
She began her talk by highlighting the importance of studying animals. She said that many diseases and viruses originate in animals and are then transferred to humans through a multitude of pathways. There has been a trend that has been found over time that shows as the number of species goes up, so does the number of human pathogens. Professor Owen stressed the importance of studying birds because they are highly mobile and can carry pathogens over very long distances. Migration is interesting to study it includes long-distance movements, is energetically expensive, the birds have to periodically stop to rest and refuel, there are challenges en route, and there is a variation in ability to meet and overcome demands.
Bird migration is innate. Birds are born with a strong sense of direction and distance. This is important because it allows the study of migratory birds to be done in captivity. In captivity, migrational behavior can be seen in birds as restlessness during the nighttime. The birds can be seen on camera flying from one side of the cage to the other and pointing their bills up to the ceiling. It has been proven that the amount of activity corresponds to the distance they would have traveled in the wild.
One of the first studies that she and her grad students did was to test if birds will continue to migrate while they are infected with an immune challenge. In this experiment, Owen studied the West Nile Virus, which has mosquitos as its vector and birds as its reservoir. A vector is what transmits the virus from one individual to another and a reservoir is the home of the virus. The West Nile Virus gets into the circulating bloodstream of the birds, so when mosquitos go to feed on the infected birds, they get the virus and can then spread it. In this study, the hypothesis was that during the infectious period, the birds would show a reduction in migratory restlessness. In reality, the infected catbirds showed no change in activity and the thrushes had a decrease in activity, however, this decrease in activity was due to 4 birds. The rest of the sample had no change in activity. All birds survived the inoculation of the virus and the amount of virus in the blood of the migratory birds was lower than in the control resident species.
After the first experiment, Owen was then curious if birds suppress their immune system during migration. To answer this, she measured spleen size and white blood cell count and found that yes they do suppress their immune system. She then wondered if this suppression is condition-dependent. To test this, she created three groups of mallards; one that was fed normally, one that had their food supply decreased by 10%, and one that had their food supply significantly decreased. Her hypothesis was that birds in poor condition were shed more pathogen. The results of this experiment showed that the poor conditioned birds actually shed the least amount of virus. Only 6 birds in the entire group even shed any virus. As of right now, Owen does not know why this occurred and she hopes to continue her research on this in the coming year.
Link to Dr. Owen’s Lab Website: http://www.theowenlab.com