Dr Sarah Duxbury

Dr. Sarah Duxbury is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy. Her current research focuses on resistance management in microbial communities via coevolution with antimicrobial peptide-secreting burying beetles. She has built a research portfolio in microbial experimental ecology and evolution, from antimicrobial resistance in fungal pathogens and plasmid transfer in bacterial populations, to maintenance of microbial diversity in freshwater microcosms.

Her research explores the antimicrobial strategies used by burying beetles to successfully manage competition for shared resources with their external microbiomes. Experiments focus on perturbation of this co-evolved system to understand the responsiveness (plasticity) of antimicrobial peptide production, in a natural system of sustainable antimicrobial resistance management. Ultimately, this research aims to develop insights for more effective strategies to tackle the antimicrobial resistance crisis.