Land Use Change, Transmission Potential Networks and Disease Spread in Madagascar

人为的土地利用改变了生态群落，导致了一个问题：这些变化如何改变传染病的传播，包括对人类的传播？这一问题在马达加斯加等低收入国家尤为重要，在这些国家，人畜共患疾病仍然是公共卫生的主要威胁。这项拟议的研究旨在模拟影响疾病传播的生态和社会经济因素，并预测传染病病原体如何从小型哺乳动物和家养动物传播到人类。这一目标将通过创新和跨学科的领域、实验室和分析方法来实现。这个由生态学家、社会科学家和一名数学家组成的团队将整合和模拟马达加斯加农村野外现场的生态和社会经济数据，其中包括一个被当地森林碎片、农田和自给自足农学家村庄包围的保护区。在公园的四个村庄周围，研究小组将调查有关人类土地利用活动如何影响人畜共患疾病传播的多种假说。为了将这一发现推广到全球，研究人员将使用全球哺乳动物寄生虫数据库来调查人类土地使用和网络连接如何影响宿主-寄生虫关系和流行率。跨学科团队在研究该系统中的传染病传播方面具有独特的地位。通过将多个数据源集成到统一的数学表示中，该团队将调查关于疾病如何使用多层传播潜力网络(TPN)传播的具体假设。值得注意的是，他们将测试TPN和疾病传播如何随着人类活动的变化而变化，并确定导致一些人更多地连接到传播网络的社会经济因素。具体地说，该小组将：(1)利用尖端领域和分析方法，结合代表多种传播方式的传染病数据，确定疾病传播途径；(2)调查与野生动物和家养动物的TPN联系最紧密的人类个体的社会经济特征；(3)描述人类活动如何产生传染病的切入点。比较分析将把研究结果扩展到马达加斯加研究系统之外。主题方案网络将基于小型哺乳动物的诱捕数据、人类和驯养动物的GPS数据以及人类的社会网络调查。该小组将测试这些网络是否预测感染多种病原体，包括钩端螺旋体、耶尔森氏菌、巴贝西亚、立克次体和胃肠道蠕虫。研究小组拥有所有必要的许可，广泛的地面后勤支持，以及关于现场人类和动物种群的大量试验数据。

Anthropogenic land use alters ecological communities, leading to the question: How do these changes alter infectious disease transmission, including to humans? This question is especially important in low-income countries such as Madagascar, where zoonotic diseases remain major threats to public health. The proposed research aims to model the ecological and socioeconomic factors that influence disease spread and predict how infectious agents spread from small mammals and domesticated animals to people. This goal will be pursued through innovative and interdisciplinary field, laboratory, and analytical approaches. The team of ecologists, social scientists, and a mathematician will integrate and model ecological and socioeconomic data from the field site in rural Madagascar, which includes a protected area surrounded by native forest fragments, agricultural fields, and villages of subsistence agriculturalists. Around four villages and in the park, the team will investigate multiple hypotheses concerning how human land use activities shape zoonotic disease transmission. To extend the findings globally, the researchers will use the Global Mammal Parasite Database to investigate how human land use and network connectivity impact host-parasite relationships and prevalence. The interdisciplinary team is uniquely positioned to investigate infectious disease transmission in this system. By integrating multiple data sources into unified mathematical representations, the team will investigate specific hypotheses for how diseases spread using multilayer transmission potential networks (TPNs). Significantly, they will test how TPNs and disease transmission change with human activities and identify the socioeconomic factors that lead some people to be more connected into transmission networks. Specifically, the team will: (i) identify pathways of disease transmission using cutting-edge field and analytical methods, coupled with infectious disease data representing multiple transmission modes; (ii) investigate socioeconomic characteristics of individual humans that most strongly connect them into TPNs of wildlife and domesticated animals; (iii) characterize how human activities generate entry points of infectious disease. Comparative analyses will extend the findings beyond the Malagasy study system. TPNs will be based on trapping data for small mammals, GPS data for people and domesticated animals, and social network surveys for people. The team will test whether these networks predict infection with multiple pathogens, including Leptospira, Yersinia, Babesia, Rickettsia, and gastrointestinal helminths. The research team has all necessary permits, extensive on-the-ground logistical support, and substantial pilot data on human and animal populations at the site.