DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Disease Invasion Dynamics: Brucella abortus and Mycobacterium bovis in African Buffalo

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Interactions between co-infecting pathogens are common in wildlife populations and each pathogen has the potential to affect one another?s transmission. In African buffalo, disease interactions may have important social and economic consequences because buffalo are the main reservoirs of brucellosis and bovine tuberculosis. Both brucellosis and tuberculosis are bacterial infections that cause significant morbidity during spill-over infections to cattle in areas surrounding wildlife preserves, such as on the borders of Kruger National Park, South Africa. Bovine tuberculosis was only recently introduced into Kruger National Park's buffalo population in the 1980s, so its effects on both the buffalo population as well as on brucellosis transmission are unknown. Bovine tuberculosis may reduce the spread of brucellosis if it causes increased mortality in co-infected animals or may increase the spread of brucellosis if the immune suppression it causes enhances the transmission of brucellosis. This project aims to understand how the immune-suppression and increased mortality caused by Bovine tuberculosis affect brucellosis transmission. The project will combine immunological tools to investigate pathogen interactions in individual buffalo, with mathematical models to scale up from individual hosts to predict population scale consequences for disease transmission in buffalo. This project will foster stronger linkage between veterinarians and ecologists through collaborations, and outreach in Africa and at the veterinary school at Oregon State University. Understanding the mechanisms and consequences of wildlife disease interactions requires integration between these fields as they offer different perspectives and techniques. Results from this project will have practical implications for management of wildlife diseases in general and for predicting the consequences of new pathogens in their wildlife reservoirs.