The Impact of Population Structure on Pathogen Transmission in Balinese Macaques

巴厘岛猕猴种群结构对病原体传播的影响

• 批准号: 0639787
• 负责人: Hope Hollocher
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Notre Dame
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-05-15 至 2011-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0639787&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Impact; Population; Structure; Pathogen; Transmission

Emerging infectious diseases are an ever-increasing part of the global landscape. As humans continue to alter the environment, human-wildlife interactions become more frequent. These interactions create risks for bi-directional pathogen transmission. On the Indonesian island of Bali, increases in human density and changes in land-use practices have substantially increased the amount of human-macaque contact, thus facilitating pathogen host-jump events. Moreover, these interactions are not confined to residents of Bali, but also involve more than one million tourists who visit Bali yearly, potentially impacting pathogen transmission on a global scale. Given that non-human primates are a demonstrated source of emerging diseases for humans, it is surprising how little is actually known about pathogen transmission dynamics within these wild host populations. This research seeks to model the relationship between human alteration of the environment, primate population genetic structure, and the ways in which pathogens are transmitted within and between primate populations. The genetic structure of macaques on Bali is determined by dispersal patterns resulting from complex social interactions being played out across the human-impacted (anthropogenic) landscape. Pathogens using macaques as their hosts are subject to these same influences. Therefore, measuring the genetic structuring of macaque populations will allow the prediction of pathogen transmission by providing detailed information of how the macaques move around their environment and which populations have differential exposure to the pathogens. The specific aims are: 1) to measure the genetic structuring of macaque populations in Bali, 2) to build an agent-based model using macaque genetic data overlain with geographical information systems (GIS) data representing different aspects of the anthropogenic landscape to make predictions about pathogen transmission, and 3) to verify and validate our model by measuring the distribution and genetic makeup of pathogen populations in the macaques across the island. The model will be used to evaluate how future changes in the anthropogenic landscape will impact pathogen transmission dynamics.Intellectual Merit. This project is the first to attempt to integrate the social, biological, and computer sciences to look at population structure and pathogen transmission in an island population of primates. We promote the use of agent-based modeling as a powerful methodological tool for investigating the interplay between individual-based mechanisms of host social interaction and dispersal and broader scale pathogen transmission dynamics across a complex landscape. The results of this research will be broadly applicable to other host-pathogen systems, both practically and theoretically.Broader Impacts. The results of this research project will benefit conservation protocols in the context of both disease and predictive population genetics models. This project trains interdisciplinary scientists focused on environmental health issues and engages a diverse audience by fostering international collaboration with Indonesia and cross-disciplinary collaboration within and between universities in the USA, providing links to the NSF funded University of Notre Dame IGERT-GLOBES graduate training program, and creating opportunities to incorporate undergraduate students as research partners and engage area high school teachers and their students in active research to help improve science curriculum at secondary schools in Indiana.

新出现的传染病是全球景观中日益增加的一部分。随着人类不断改变环境，人类与野生动物的互动变得更加频繁。这些相互作用造成病原体双向传播的风险。在印度尼西亚的巴厘岛，人口密度的增加和土地利用方式的改变大大增加了人与猕猴的接触，从而促进了病原体宿主跳跃事件。此外，这些相互作用不仅限于巴厘岛的居民，而且还涉及每年访问巴厘岛的100多万游客，可能影响全球范围内的病原体传播。鉴于非人灵长类动物是人类新发疾病的一个来源，令人惊讶的是，人们对这些野生宿主种群中的病原体传播动态知之甚少。这项研究旨在模拟人类改变环境，灵长类种群遗传结构，以及病原体在灵长类种群内和之间传播的方式之间的关系。巴厘岛猕猴的遗传结构是由复杂的社会互动所产生的扩散模式决定的，这些社会互动在整个人类影响（人为）的景观中发挥作用。以猕猴为宿主的病原体也会受到同样的影响。因此，测量猕猴种群的遗传结构将允许通过提供猕猴如何在其环境中移动以及哪些种群对病原体具有不同暴露的详细信息来预测病原体传播。具体目标是：1）测量巴厘岛猕猴种群的遗传结构，2）使用猕猴遗传数据与代表人类景观不同方面的地理信息系统（GIS）数据建立基于代理的模型，以预测病原体传播，3）通过测量全岛猕猴中病原体种群的分布和遗传组成来验证和验证我们的模型。该模型将用于评估未来人类活动对病原体传播动态的影响。该项目是第一个尝试整合社会，生物和计算机科学来研究灵长类动物岛屿种群的种群结构和病原体传播的项目。 我们提倡使用基于代理人的建模作为一种强大的方法论工具，用于研究宿主社会互动和传播的基于个人的机制与复杂景观中更广泛的病原体传播动态之间的相互作用。这项研究的结果将广泛适用于其他宿主-病原体系统，无论是在实践中还是在理论上。该研究项目的结果将有利于疾病和预测群体遗传学模型背景下的保护协议。 该项目培训了专注于环境健康问题的跨学科科学家，并通过促进与印度尼西亚的国际合作以及美国大学内部和大学之间的跨学科合作来吸引不同的受众，提供与NSF资助的圣母大学IGERT-GLOBES研究生培训计划的链接，并创造机会，将本科生作为研究伙伴，让地区高中教师和学生积极参与研究，以帮助提高科学水平印第安纳州的中学课程。