Wildlife disease ecology and gamebird management: a one health approach to Lyme disease

野生动物疾病生态学和猎鸟管理：莱姆病的单一健康方法

• 批准号: 2580209
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2580209
• 关键词: Wildlife; disease; ecology; gamebird; management

Wildlife is an important source of emerging human diseases. A One Health approach that integrates animal, human and environmental health is thus key for understanding the ecology of emerging zoonotic diseases as well as successful disease control and management. Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in the northern hemisphere. The number of human Lyme cases has increased rapidly in recent years, leading to public health concern. Pheasants are released in large numbers for recreational hunting in the UK. These birds can harbour large numbers of ticks and are particularly competent reservoir hosts for Borrelia, the causative agent of Lyme disease. A growing body of research is investigating the ecological effects of released gamebirds on habitats and native wildlife. Surprisingly, however, the consequences of gamebird releases for zoonotic disease dynamics and human infection risk have so far been neglected.The aim of this project is to test how gamebird releases affect Lyme disease risk across the UK and how management practices can influence vector abundance and transmission dynamics. This multidisciplinary project provides opportunities to combine ecological fieldwork (e.g. sampling of pheasants and other wildlife hosts, monitoring of tick populations), molecular techniques (e.g. detection of Borrelia infection using qPCR) and spatial modelling to addresses fundamental questions in disease ecology and community ecology, with important applied opportunities for wildlife management and human health.

野生动物是人类新发疾病的重要来源。因此，整合动物、人类和环境健康的“同一个健康”方法是了解新出现的人畜共患疾病的生态以及成功的疾病控制和管理的关键。莱姆病是北半球最常见的蜱传疾病。近年来，人类莱姆病病例数量迅速增加，引发了公众健康担忧。英国为了休闲狩猎而大量放生雉鸡。这些鸟类可以栖息大量蜱虫，尤其是莱姆病病原体伯氏疏螺旋体的宿主。越来越多的研究正在调查释放的猎鸟对栖息地和本土野生动物的生态影响。然而，令人惊讶的是，迄今为止，野禽释放对人畜共患疾病动态和人类感染风险的影响却被忽视了。该项目的目的是测试野禽释放如何影响英国莱姆病风险，以及管理实践如何影响媒介丰度和传播动态。这个多学科项目提供了将生态实地工作（例如对野鸡和其他野生动物宿主进行采样、监测蜱种群）、分子技术（例如使用 qPCR 检测疏螺旋体感染）和空间建模相结合的机会，以解决疾病生态学和群落生态学的基本问题，并为野生动物管理和人类健康提供重要的应用机会。