US-UK Collaboration: Integrating ecology, epidemiology, and human interests to guide strategic management of zoonoses in complex wildlife reservoirs

野生动物携带各种各样的病原体，这些病原体可以传播给其他动物和人类。包括埃博拉和COVID-19在内的此类疾病严重影响人类健康、农业和野生动物保护。从历史上看，疾病控制方法（如疫苗接种、治疗）侧重于人类或牲畜，而不是野生动物宿主。关注野生动物的疾病控制可以更有效地预防人类的疾病出现，但这种方法目前受到三个因素的限制。首先，许多疾病是在整个景观中传播的循环中维持的，但众所周知，在这些大的空间尺度上，野生动物疾病很难评估，这使得对干预措施的反应难以预测。其次，像疫苗这样的工具很难给足够数量的动物注射，以减少疾病在野外的传播。第三，干预措施通常受到社会约束的限制，包括财政约束（例如，投资资金有限）和社会约束（例如，社会约束）。利益相关者利益冲突)。新技术，包括可以在野生动物之间传播的疫苗和小型化的动物传播追踪系统，在克服这些限制方面具有尚未实现的潜力。该项目将侧重于减少吸血蝙蝠传播的狂犬病，这对整个拉丁美洲的人类健康和农业都有重大影响，但本研究开发的方法可以应用于其他重要的野生动物疾病。该项目将通过在实地、实验室和定量方法方面培训学生和早期职业科学家来加强研究能力。该项目将进行实地和实验室研究，以测试有关吸血蝙蝠传播狂犬病的流行病学和管理的具体假设。研究人员将：(1)使用动物携带的GPS标签进行实地实验，并从调查问卷和历史狂犬病爆发中获得蝙蝠存在的大规模数据，以生成可用于确定人类干扰如何影响蝙蝠数量和分布的模型；(2)利用圈养蝙蝠和野生吸血蝙蝠开展研究，以确定会影响以蝙蝠为目标使用自传播性脑膜炎疫苗的宿主和生态因素；(3)利用从实地调查和圈养研究中估计的参数来优化吸血蝙蝠狂犬病的局部控制和区域消除策略，以满足不同利益相关者的要求，例如野生动物保护目标以及改善人类和牲畜健康。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Wild animals host a wide variety of pathogens that can spread to other animals and humans. Suchdiseases, including Ebola and COVID-19, significantly affect human health, agriculture and wildlifeconservation. Historically, disease control methods (e.g. vaccination, therapeutics) have focused onhumans or livestock rather than wild animal reservoirs. Focusing on disease control in wildlife couldbe more effective in preventing disease emergence in humans, but that approach is currently limitedby three factors. First, many diseases are maintained in cycles that spread across landscapes, butwildlife diseases are notoriously difficult to assess at these large spatial scales, making responses tointerventions unpredictable. Second, tools like vaccines have been difficult to administer to sufficientnumbers of animals to actually reduce disease transmission in the wild. Third, interventions areusually bounded by societal constraints, both financial (e.g., limited funds to invest) and sociological(e.g., conflicting stakeholder interests). New technologies, including vaccines that can spread amongwildlife and miniaturized animal-borne tracking systems, have unrealized potential to overcome theselimitations. This project will focus on reducing vampire bat transmitted rabies, which has significanthuman health and agricultural impacts across Latin America, but the methods developed for this studycould be applied to other important wildlife diseases. The project will strengthen researchcapacity through training of students and early career scientists in field, laboratory and quantitative methodologies.This project will conduct field and laboratory research to test specific hypotheses about theepidemiology and management of vampire bat-transmitted rabies. The researchers will: (1) Use fieldexperiments with animal-borne GPS tags and large-scale data on bat presence from questionnairesand historical rabies outbreaks to generate models that can be used to determine how humandisturbance influences bat abundance and dispersal; (2) Conduct studies using captive and wildvampire bats to determine host and ecological factors that will influence the use of self-spreadingrabies vaccines that target bats; and (3) Use parameters estimated from fieldwork and captive studiesto optimize strategies for localized control and regional elimination of vampire bat rabies that preservediverse stakeholder requirements, e.g. wildlife conservation goals as well as improved human andlivestock health.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.