Welcome to the website of the Hughes Lab. The lab is part of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and The Huck Institute for Life Science @ Penn State. We are located at the MSC and David is a faculty member of both Entomology  (College of Ag Sciences) & Biology (Eberly College of Science) and a member of the Ecology Program.

Much of the research driving the lab is at the intersection of disease & behavior: how and why parasites manipulate host behavior and what is the role of behavior in reducing disease transmission.

We are also interested in applied work. One aspect is the biocontrol of ants that are often pests on agricultural landscapes. We work on Cassava and Cocoa farms in Ghana. David has also developed PlantVillage with another CIDDer, Marcel Salathe. That aim of which is to democratize the access to the world’s food to reduce the potential of Famines.

Here is David talking about Zombie ants and Famine