Gutsy work: Dr Michelle Power, Associate Professor at Macquarie University’s Department of Biological Sciences explains her research into the impact of human-associated organisms on our wildlife.

Dr Power trained as a parasitologist working on Cryptosporidium and Giardia just after Sydney’s water crisis some years ago. She is interested in the gut as an ecological system and how different organisms invade the gut bacterial community.

Some 75% of new and emerging diseases of humans have come from wildlife sources (termed zoonoses) and the impact of these disease means that public health is often used as an emphasis to attract funding.

Her current research group is interested in the reverse of that process, when organisms that cause human disease make their way into wildlife. These human-associated parasites are not necessarily directly transferred to wildlife but pollution of the environment through things like sewage and waste water means such parasites can find their way into different wildlife species. One of the biggest vectors is water and the protozoan parasites that she studies are transmitted by water, a risk if we contaminate swimming pools and river systems.