Collaborative Research: Ecological Interactions between Sudden Oak Death and Lyme Disease in California

一种毁灭性的植物病原体，多枝疫霉，引起疾病橡树猝死症（SOD），正在席卷加州的橡树林地。这种新的疾病有可能深刻影响当地的脊椎动物种群。脊椎动物种群（例如，小鼠、松鼠、蜥蜴），反过来，通过影响蜱虫媒介的数量和感染，强烈影响人类接触莱姆病（LD）的风险。这项研究将整合现场，实验室和建模工作。首先，结合现场和实验室研究将提供信息的个别宿主物种的贡献LD风险在加州。第二，将在高与低SOD影响的地点比较特定脊椎动物群体的丰度。第三，特定宿主对SOD的反应将被用于构建模型来预测SOD如何改变人类暴露于LD的风险。第四，从这些模型中产生的具体假设将通过评估蜱虫丰度和感染流行率在高和低SOD的影响，我们的研究嵌入生态的最流行的病媒传播的疾病，人类在美国（LD）内的生态破坏性传染病的植物（SOD），并特别询问这两个疾病系统如何相互作用。SOD的爆发为确定人类传染病如何受到外来森林病原体的影响提供了一个新的机会。这种研究为当前植物病原体和害虫的流行提供了一个模型（例如，山毛榉树皮病、铁杉绵球蚜、舞毒蛾），这些疾病极有可能极大地改变北美森林的组成，对人类健康产生潜在的严重后果。

A devastating plant pathogen, Phytophthora ramorum, which causes the disease Sudden Oak Death (SOD), is sweeping through oak woodlands of California. This new disease has the potential to profoundly affect local vertebrate populations. Vertebrate populations (e.g., mice, squirrels, lizards), in turn, strongly influence risk of human exposure to Lyme disease (LD) via their impacts on numbers and infection of tick vectors. This research will integrate field, laboratory, and modeling efforts. First, a combination of field and lab studies will furnish information on individual host species' contributions to LD risk in California. Second, the abundance of specific groups of vertebrates will be compared in sites of high versus low SOD impact. Third, responses by specific hosts to SOD will be used to construct models to predict how SOD will change risk of human exposure to LD. Fourth, specific hypotheses arising from these models will be tested by assessing tick abundance and infection prevalence in areas of high and low SOD impact.Our research embeds the ecology of the most prevalent vector-borne disease of humans in the United States (LD) within the ecology of a devastating infectious disease of plants (SOD), and specifically asks how these two disease systems interact. The outbreak of SOD presents a novel opportunity to determine how a human infectious disease is impacted by an exotic forest pathogen. Such research provides a model for current epidemics of plant pathogens and pests (e.g., beech bark disease, hemlock woolly adelgid, gypsy moth) that in all likelihood will dramatically change the composition of North American forests, with potentially strong consequences for human health.