Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences

Katherine Amato Biological anthropology

Research Interests

I study the gut microbiota in the broad context of host ecology and evolution. Specifically, my research integrates the gut microbiota into models of host bioenergetics to understand microbial influences on host nutrition and metabolism, and the implications for host behavior, physiology, life history, and health. I use data from wild, non-human primates to explore these interactions and their impacts on hosts in a selective environment and apply the same ecological and evolutionary frameworks to human-gut microbe interactions. More recently, I have also begun to generate data from captive non-human primates and mice that allow me to complement my observational work in humans and non-human primates with more direct investigations of cause and effect. As a result of these multiple perspectives, as well as the combined use of behavioral, molecular, physiological, and nutritional measures, my work is highly interdisciplinary. My ultimate research goal is to effectively incorporate evolutionary perspectives into human microbiome research, providing novel avenues of inquiry and thereby advancing a range of fields from biomedical and clinical research to evolutionary theory.

Selected Publications