Solny Adalsteinsson

Tyson Staff Scientist

“Growing up, I recently found I had a journal where I would write little notes about wildlife. I would watch a bird at a feeder and write, ‘Cardinal eating bird seeds!!!!!!!!’ with lots of exclamation points.”

It took Solny a while to get into ornithology, but her love for wildlife and nature was always there. A field season in Iceland during her undergrad confirmed her scientific passion for birds, but later work on other animals made it difficult for her to focus on only one species. Her broad interests fit under the umbrella of One Health, a global, interdisciplinary initiative to bring together experts from all fields of human, animal, plant, and environmental health. currently, she co-teaches a course on the initiative at WashU when she’s not at Tyson, inspiring students to get involved at the research center or turn their attention to the pressing need for interdisciplinary collaboration. Her tick-borne disease research fits right into this perspective.

“In my research I try to study these links between humans and their environment, and vector-borne disease systems exemplify how these links function in both directions; vector-borne diseases are strongly impacted by human changes to the environment, and in turn, humans are directly affected by vector-borne diseases. The ultimate goal is to identify land management strategies that can improve ecosystem health while also reducing disease risk for humans and wildlife.”

Solny leads the Tick & Wildlife Ecology team. Learn more about their prescribed fire and tick-borne disease ecology research here.