Processes and mechanisms driving virus prevalence, evolutionary potential and emergence from wildlife reservoirs: integrating host and viral traits in a multi-taxa approach across landscapes

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Despite considerable research efforts during recent years, still very little is known about fundamental ecological mechanisms driving virus prevalence, evolutionary potential and emergence from wildlife reservoirs in general. Holistic approaches integrating host and viral traits are required to understand the dynamics and drivers of virus infections. This collaborative, multi-taxa project investigates the impact of anthropogenic habitat disturbance on host community composition, abundance pattern and immune genetic constitution of generalist species and relates the obtained data to local virus prevalence. Our aim is to identify ecological, behavioral and genetic constraints associated with virus evolution under the hypothesis of the dilution effect. We are focusing on three major viral vertebrate host taxa - bats, rodents and marsupials -, as well as on putatively blood-feeding mosquito vectors. Whereas our focus in the first funding period was on taking baseline data and parameter correlations, we will shift in the second period to ecological validation, ecological modeling and network analyses of host-virus systems in order to investigate the development and dynamics of virus mutation hotspots in disturbed landscapes. The central task will be to understand the processes and mechanisms that determine how biodiversity loss and shifts in species abundance of resilient, less sensitive species modulate virus ecology and lead to an increased prevalence and diversification of emerging pathogens within native animal communities.