Cara N. Love, PhD
Cara's research investigates the mechanisms of resilience to anthropogenic stress in wildlife, and how those mechanisms may shed light on persistent challenges in human health and disease.
We are living through a period of unprecedented environmental change, one in which few ecosystems remain unaltered by human activity. How wildlife populations respond to these pressures, and whether some individuals or species carry biological traits that confer resilience, are questions with consequences that extend well beyond conservation. Disruptions to wildlife health and immune function can reshape disease dynamics in ways that ultimately affect and inform human health. Cara's work sits at this intersection: using wildlife as a window into the biology of stress, adaptation, and survival.
Connecting Systems and Ideas
Cara's research is deeply interdisciplinary, drawing on genomics, ecology, evolutionary biology, ecotoxicology, immunology, disease and cancer biology to investigate how chronic exposure to novel stressors shape physiological function, immune competence, and population-level health outcomes.
Informing conservation, scientific theory, and mechanisms important to individual and population health
Cara integrates fieldwork with molecular and lab techniques to characterize the physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying resilience to chronic environmental stress. By studying how wild populations respond, and in some cases adapt, to contamination and/or emerging diseases, her work advances both conservation science and our broader understanding of how biological systems sustain function under pressure. These insights carry direct relevance for human medicine, particularly in areas of immune resilience, toxicological response, and disease susceptibility.
A good question can take
you anywhere
Cara’s research encompasses numerous systems and species worldwide.