Lorenza BEATI ZIEGLER

Lorenza Beati (MD, PhD) is a medical entomologist and Professor at the Georgia Southern University, and the curator of the largest tick collection in the world: the U.S. National Tick Collection. Her laboratory research is centered on molecular systematics and population genetics of arthropods vectors of diseases (ticks and sand flies) and of the pathogen they transmit. She leads several research projects involving undergraduate students on population genetics of the Lyme disease vector, Ixodes scapularis, in the United States and on a widespread neotropical tick species, Amblyomma cajennense, which transmits Rocky Mountain spotted fever, on neotropical Lutzomyia species, vectors of Leishmaniasis, and on Amblyomma variegatum, an invading tick species carried from Africa in the Caribbean.