Dr. Ana V. Longo

Associate Professor of Biology, University of Florida

Focus regions: Nearctic, Neotropical

Ana V. Longo is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Florida, where she leads a lab on amphibian disease ecology, conservation, and evolution. She studies the ecological and evolutionary processes that shape host interactions with pathogens, parasites, and symbionts. Her work began with a question from her native Puerto Rico: why did some frogs disappear after infection with the amphibian-killing fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis while others persisted? She integrates population biology, microbial ecology, and genomics to explain disease outcomes across species. Longo earned her Ph.D. at Cornell University and her B.S. and M.S. at the University of Puerto Rico–Río Piedras, and was an NSF Minority Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland and Smithsonian. She has authored 70 publications, trained over 30 students, served as Associate Editor at Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and reviewed for multiple journals. Her research is funded by NSF and USFWS.

Website·ORCID

Contributions

From the journals

Playing it safe at early life stages: Balancing energy allocations to maximize fitness under seasonal pathogen dynamics

Colón-Piñeiro, Z., Martin, N. W., Klee, T. J., Buchanan, B. L., St. Mary, C. M., Acevedo, M. A., Burrowes, P. A., & Longo, A. V. · Journal of Animal Ecology · June 2026

Juvenile amphibians are hard to monitor because of their small size, yet this is often the stage most vulnerable to disease and environmental stress. This study introduces a theoretical framework linking early-life trade-offs between growth and immune defenses to infection outcomes and individual fitness under seasonal pathogen dynamics. We parameterized the model with empirical data on growth, seasonal prey availability and Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) infection dynamics in the tropical direct-developing coqui frog, Eleutherodactylus coqui. We identified the hatching season that minimizes long-term costs of infection for individual's growth, survival, and lifetime fecundity. Because the framework is based on species-specific life-history data, conservation practitioners can retune it to find optimal release ages and seasonal windows for other vulnerable amphibians, as well as the best timing for invasive-species control. Timing interventions to match favorable conditions should increase reintroduction success and strengthen population resilience to emerging diseases.

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