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Iris Holmes

Iris Holmes, Assistant Professor

My primary research interest is in microbial ecology broadly across biological communities (including humans). I focus especially on reptiles as a model system. We are particularly interested in the processes, including habitat disturbance, that allow microbes to jump to new hosts. Human pathogen emergence is one example of a microbial host jump that can have huge consequences.

We use ecological and evolutionary tools to answer questions like:

  1. What makes a host species more or less likely to be infected by a novel microbe?
  2. Which traits predict a microbes’ ability to survive and spread to new hosts?
  3. What environmental conditions lead to higher rates of microbes infecting novel host species?
SIU Iris Holmes

389 Life Science II
iris.holmes@siu.edu

Education 

BA, Biology, Cornell University; PhD, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan; Postdoctoral, Cornell Institute of Host-Microbe Interactions and Disease and Cornell Department of Public and Ecosystem Health

Areas of Interest

Herpetology, host-microbe interactions, community ecology, emerging pathogens

Selected publications

Holmes IA, Martínez-Fonseca JG, von May R, Sealey B, Cerda PA, Grundler MR, Westeen EP, Nondorf D*, Larson JG, Myers CR, Hendry TA. 2025. Increased host diversity limits bacterial generalism but may promote microbe-microbe interactions. ISME Communications.

Martínez-Fonseca JG and Holmes IA, Sunyer J, Cerda PA, Fernández M, Loza J, Grundler MR, Westeen EP, Monagan, Jr. IV, Nondorf D*, Pandelis GG*, Davis Rabosky AR. 2024. An expeditionary collection and analysis of amphibians and reptiles from Nicaragua with an updated checklist of new species records. Checklist, 20(1):58-125. DOI: 10.15560/20.1.58

Holmes IA, Monagan IV Jr, Westphal MF, Johnson PJ, Davis Rabosky AR. 2023. Parsing variance by marker type: Testing biogeographic hypotheses and differential contribution of historical processes to population structure in a desert lizard. Molecular Ecology, 32(17):4880-4897. DOI:10.1111/mec.17076

Holmes IA, Grundler MC. 2022. Phylogenetically under-dispersed gut microbiomes are structured by conserved host genes in a genetically diverse reptile community. Molecular Ecology, 32(1):258-274. DOI:10.1111/mec.1673