Kaylee Arnold is a PhD student at the University of Georgia, in the Odum School of Ecology. She is a disease ecologist who studies the impacts of human and environmental disturbances on disease transmission between humans and animals. Her dissertation is focused on understanding the relationships between the gut microbial communities of insect disease vectors, deforestation, and transmission risk to humans and other mammals. More specifically, Kaylee studies the gut microbiota of the kissing bug, Rhodnius pallescens, which is the primary Chagas disease vector in Panama.