Bioinformatics Starter Grant: Hierarchical Bayesian modeling to investigate climate and land-use drivers in the multi-species ecology of West Nile virus.

生态研究所获得了一笔赠款，以支持研究开发和实施方法，将生态数据与相关时空尺度的生物模型相结合，以更好地了解多物种系统的生态，包括西尼罗河病毒（WNV）。这项研究将有两个主要目标。首先，分层贝叶斯（HB）建模将用于整合当地温度和降水措施与WNV活动（在人类，马和鸟类样本）的数据，以评估县到区域尺度的天气如何影响流行病WNV放大。研究结果将用于实施一个完整的时空模型，该模型将疾病（WNV）、气候（冬季温度和ENSO）和人类土地利用对20种美国本土鸟类种群丰度的加性和相互作用的影响结合起来。第二，现有的数据描述整个北美的病媒丰度和物种组成将综合从公共卫生，生态，昆虫学和蚊子控制的来源;和病媒丰度和组成将在一个县以下的规模从土地使用梯度采样网络目前实施的巴尔的摩生态系统研究长期生态研究项目。这项研究的结果将有助于理解复杂的生态系统结构，支持虫媒病毒（包括西尼罗河病毒）的扩增和持久性后，引进，并可能另外提供深入了解蚊子减少在城市与农村地区。这项研究的最终产品将是这两个目标的综合，整合了病媒和宿主社区的生态，以开发一个预测模型，预测气候和土地利用变化情景如何影响节肢动物传播病毒（包括西尼罗河病毒）的生态及其对本地生态系统的影响。

The Institute of Ecological Studies is awarded a grant in support of research to develop and implement methods to integrate ecological data with biological models at relevant spatial and temporal scales to better understand the ecology of multi-species systems, including West Nile virus (WNV). The research will have two primary aims. First, Hierarchical Bayesian (HB) modeling will be used to integrate data on local temperature and precipitation measures with WNV activity (in human, horse, and bird samples) to assess how county to region-scale weather influence epizootic WNV amplification. The results will be used to implement a fully spatio-temporal model that incorporates the additive and interacting affects of disease (WNV), climate (winter temperatures and ENSO), and human land-use on population abundances for twenty native U.S. bird species. Second, available data describing vector abundance and species composition across North America will be synthesized from public health, ecological, entomological, and mosquito control sources; and vector abundance and composition will be sampled at a sub-county scale from the land-use gradient sampling network currently implemented in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study Long Term Ecological Research project. The results of this study will contribute to an understanding of the complex ecosystem structure that supports arbovirus (including WNV) amplification and persistence after introduction, and may additionally provide insight into mosquito abatement in urban versus rural areas. A final product of this research will be a synthesis of these two aims that integrates the ecology of both vector and host communities to develop a forecast model for how climate and land-use change scenarios may affect the ecology of arthropod-borne viruses (including West Nile virus) and their impact on native ecosystems.