EAGER: Integrating animal movement ecology and multi-level social networks to investigate zoonotic disease dynamics

该项目测量和模拟两种蝙蝠的运动和社会互动，以及这些行为如何影响蝙蝠冠状病毒的传播，如SARS-CoV-2，这种病毒导致COVID-19，在蝙蝠之间以及蝙蝠和人类之间。人畜共患疾病，如腺鼠疫、莱姆病、流感、埃博拉病毒、狂犬病和COVID-19，是由从动物传播给人的病原体引起的，对人类造成毁灭性影响。然而，并非所有潜在的人畜共患病病原体都会出现在人类身上，部分原因是动物的运动及其相互之间以及与人类的社会互动会影响病原体的传播和扩散。因此，重要的是要了解更多关于动物的行为，这是人畜共患病的潜在来源，使疾病的动态可以更好地理解和预测。将通过分子技术在美国西南部沙漠的蝙蝠中识别病毒，并使用GPS追踪器和射频识别（RFID）标签（与用于识别宠物的“微芯片”相同）跟踪相同的蝙蝠，以了解蝙蝠离开栖息地时的飞行模式以及栖息地内蝙蝠之间的接触（“接触追踪”）。所获得的信息将有助于预测病毒在蝙蝠中的传播，并且与SARS-CoV-2相关，如果它曾经从人类“溢出”到北美蝙蝠。这项工作的更广泛影响包括与当地科学教育团体合作，对中学生进行关于人畜共患病和流行病学的教育。该项目还将为在新墨西哥州州立大学（一所为西班牙裔服务的机构）培训本科生和研究生提供机会。研究动物运动、社会行为和疾病生态学的交叉点是了解动物宿主内人畜共患病动态的关键。动物如何在环境中移动，以及它们如何与同种和异种相互作用，都会影响人畜共患病的传播和扩散。该项目将研究动物运动和多物种宿主社会网络接触如何影响地方性冠状病毒和潜在的新型冠状病毒SARS-CoV-2在北美蝙蝠物种内和之间的传播风险。这项工作得到了越来越小的动物跟踪设备和使用基因组技术进行病原体检测的进步的促进，使研究小组能够描述个体蝙蝠的运动，社会互动和“病毒组”。通过反复对蝙蝠病毒组进行采样，研究人员将确定随着时间的推移，个体蝙蝠携带的病毒株。北美蝙蝠携带多种冠状病毒株，SARS-CoV-2有可能从人类“回流”到蝙蝠身上。研究人员还将使用GPS跟踪来描述单个蝙蝠的运动特征，并将使用RFID标记的蝙蝠之间的联系和荧光粉跟踪来为共享栖息地的蝙蝠构建多物种社交网络。将蝙蝠的运动和社会行为与它们的病毒组相结合，将促进我们对人畜共患病病原体宿主内动态的理解。本科生和研究生将参与研究，针对中学的教育资源将帮助那些生活被COVID-19大流行打乱的学生了解人畜共患病的起源和流行病学的基本概念。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project measures and models movement and social interactions in two bat species and how these behaviors may influence spread of bat coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, among bats and between bats and humans. Zoonotic diseases, such as bubonic plague, Lyme disease, flu, Ebola, rabies, and COVID-19, are caused by pathogens transmitted from animals to people, with devastating effects on humans. Not all potentially zoonotic pathogens will emerge into humans, however, in part because movements of animals and their social interactions with each other and with humans affect the transmission and spread of pathogens. It is, therefore, important to know more about behaviors of animals that are potential sources of zoonotic diseases so that disease dynamics can be better understood and predicted. Viruses will be identified by molecular techniques in bats in the desert southwest of the United States, and the same bats will be followed with GPS trackers and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags (the same “microchips” used to identify pets) to understand flight patterns when out of their roosts and contacts among bats within roosts (“contact tracing”). The information obtained will be useful for predicting the spread of viruses in bats, and is of relevance to SARS-CoV-2 should it ever “spill back” from people to North American bats. The broader impacts of this work include a collaboration with a local science education group to educate middle-school students about zoonotic diseases and epidemiology. The project will also provide opportunities for training of undergraduate and graduate students at New Mexico State University, a Hispanic-Serving Institution. Research at the intersection of animal movement, social behavior, and disease ecology is key to understanding the dynamics of zoonotic diseases within animal hosts. How animals move through their environments and how they interact with both conspecifics and heterospecifics can influence the transmission and spread of zoonoses. This project will investigate how animal movement and multi-species host social network contacts shape risk of transmission of both endemic coronaviruses and potentially the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 within and among North American bat species. This work is facilitated by ever-smaller animal tracking devices and advances in pathogen detection using genomic techniques, allowing the research team to characterize the movements, social interactions, and “viromes” of individual bats through time. By repeatedly sampling bat viromes, the researchers will determine which viral strains are harbored by individual bats through time. North American bats host multiple coronavirus strains, and there is a risk that SARS-CoV-2 may “spillback” from humans into bats. The researchers will also characterize the movements of individual bats using GPS tracking, and will use contacts among RFID-tagged bats and fluorescent-powder tracking to construct multi-species social networks for bats that share a roost. Integrating the movement and social behavior of bats with their viromes will advance our understanding of within-host dynamics of zoonotic pathogens. Undergraduate and graduate students will be involved in the research, and educational resources targeted to middle schools will help students whose lives have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic understand the origins of zoonotic diseases and basic concepts in epidemiology.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.