EID: Challenges and Opportunities in the Ecology of Marine Infectious Diseases

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This workshop will bring together scientists actively conducting research on ecology of infectious diseases (EID) in marine, coastal and estuarine systems. It will be coordinated by Rachel Noble, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Jim Porter, University of Georgia. The meeting will be held at San Juan, Puerto Rico, conveniently aligned with the 2011 ASLO Aquatic Sciences meeting to benefit from the ASLO special session on EID in marine systems chaired by the PIs and from participation and discussions by scientists that regularly attend this recognized international meeting.Intellectual Merit:This is a community planning activity that is of the highest importance to enhance our understanding of the ecology of infectious diseases in marine, coastal and estuarine systems. This workshop will explore the state of the science in ongoing and past marine EID projects and foster discussions about innovative projects in this field. Participants will identify challenges to address tractable questions and partnerships needed to address them, as well as make recommendations for short and long term research directions. They will also identify major differences between EID in terrestrial and marine systems and how EID in marine systems can benefit from knowledge about terrestrial systems.Through discussions with Principal Investigators in the last Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) Meeting held on March 2010, there is wide consensus in the scientific community that this workshop is timely and important. It is key that we identify the challenges related to the control of infectious diseases in the oceans as there is a potential for long distance dispersal of larvae and their associated diseases. Additionally, as mentioned by the PIs, environmental stressors, such as climate change and anthropogenic activity, are affecting microbial growth and survival, and are likely to increase the importance of marine diseases in the near future.Broader Impacts:The insights from this workshop are likely to be of critical importance in increasing the response of the marine/coastal community to the NSF EID program. The workshop participants will be selected keeping in mind the need to include a diverse cross section of the community. The PIs plan to include young scientists as well as scientists with different backgrounds and from both developed and developing countries in a focused community planning effort. The workshop will potentially increase collaborations between marine scientists and others interested in infectious diseases (e.g. biomedical, veterinary, epidemiologists, pathologists and mathematicians). The results from this community workshop will be disseminated in a format suitable for publication in a major peer-reviewed journal and will be widely available to the scientific community.