Spillover of Ebola and other filoviruses at ecological boundaries

埃博拉和其他丝状病毒在生态边界的溢出

• 批准号: 10533176
• 负责人: Patrick Stephens
• 金额: $ 39.56万
• 依托单位: OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY STILLWATER
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-06-17 至 2025-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10533176
• 关键词: Spillover; Ebola; other; filoviruses; ecological

More than half of all infectious disease outbreaks across the globe are zoonotic, involving pathogen spillover from animal reservoirs to humans. Ebola and other filoviruses rank among the most deadly zoonoses. Recent large outbreaks with mortality in the thousands both in humans and wildlife underscore the pressing need to better understand the factors promoting filovirus spillover. Although spillover is commonly defined as a pathogen crossing species boundaries, there are relatively few empirical studies or modeling frameworks that explicitly consider ecological boundaries across which spillover occurs. Crossing ecological boundaries involves processes that occur at many levels of organization: physiological processes at the individual level, interspecies interactions between individuals at the population level, interactions between populations of different species at the community level, and interactions between ecological communities within landscapes. Processes accelerating spillover often involve human activities such as habitat encroachment and land conversion, which are themselves ultimately driven by socioeconomic factors. In the context of Ebola and other filoviruses in Africa, we will develop the data sets, theoretical models and statistical tools needed for a general descriptive and predictive framework for spillover at ecological boundaries. Our project will follow an iterative design where results from mechanistic models are used to refine patterns that we test for empirically, and statistical models of large-scale data allow us to more realistically parameterize mechanistic models. Our work will test the generality of specific theories that so far have been applied only to a limited number of study systems. For example, ours will be among the first attempts to test the influence of Schmalhausen’s law -- an evolutionary theory that may explain the tendency for large outbreaks to occur at the edges of species ranges or during unusual weather conditions and which to date has primarily been investigated in the context of malaria -- in pathogens that rely on direct transmission. This work will demonstrate how new methods can provide unifying insight into patterns in critically important disease transmission systems and will enhance our ability to predict spillover of both filoviruses and many other zoonotic pathogens. Note that no human subjects, biohazards, or select agents will be involved in this project.

在地球仪上，半数以上的传染病是人畜共患的，涉及病原体从动物宿主向人类的溢出。埃博拉病毒和其他丝状病毒属于最致命的人畜共患病。最近在人类和野生动物中造成数千人死亡的大规模疫情强调迫切需要更好地了解促进丝状病毒溢出的因素。尽管溢出通常被定义为病原体跨越物种边界，但明确考虑溢出发生的生态边界的实证研究或建模框架相对较少。跨越生态边界涉及在许多组织层次上发生的过程：个体层次上的生理过程，种群层次上个体之间的物种间相互作用，群落层次上不同物种种群之间的相互作用，以及景观内生态群落之间的相互作用。加速溢出的过程往往涉及人类活动，如栖息地侵占和土地转换，这些活动本身最终是由社会经济因素驱动的。在非洲埃博拉和其他丝状病毒的背景下，我们将开发数据集，理论模型和统计工具，用于生态边界溢出的一般描述和预测框架。我们的项目将遵循迭代设计，其中来自机械模型的结果用于改进我们凭经验测试的模式，大规模数据的统计模型使我们能够更真实地参数化机械模型。我们的工作将测试的一般性的具体理论，到目前为止，只适用于有限数量的研究系统。例如，我们将是第一次尝试测试Schmalhausen定律的影响-这是一种进化理论，可以解释在物种范围的边缘或在异常天气条件下发生大规模爆发的趋势，迄今为止主要是在疟疾的背景下进行研究-在依赖直接传播的病原体中。这项工作将展示新方法如何为至关重要的疾病传播系统的模式提供统一的见解，并将提高我们预测丝状病毒和许多其他人畜共患病病原体溢出的能力。请注意，本项目将不涉及人类受试者、生物危害物或选定制剂。