Individuals, energetics and infectious disease

由于全球旅行和贸易影响病原体的传播，而环境变化影响宿主的易感性，野生动物的传染病日益受到关注。人们越来越认识到病原体会导致物种灭绝和生物多样性丧失，并且越来越认识到野生动物疾病与人类公共卫生相关。最近出现的人类传染病（例如 SARS、亨德拉病毒、尼帕病毒、马尔堡病毒、埃博拉病毒）似乎是在野生动物（特别是蝙蝠）因人类发展而被迫与人类接触时出现的。在北美，冬眠的蝙蝠还面临着新型真菌病白鼻综合症的紧迫保护威胁。尽管野生动物病原体对生态、经济、公共卫生和保护产生影响，但我们对大多数野生动物疾病的宿主-病原体动态的实验数据有限。因此，从长远来看，我的目标是在理论上但很少有实验支持的情况下检验一个广泛的假设：个体、社会群体和宿主群体之间的行为和生理变化会影响宿主-病原体动态和病原体影响。我的短期目标是利用蝙蝠的社会物种来检验根据该假设得出的三个预测：（1）在个体尺度上，性格和能量影响个体获取和传播病原体的风险； （2）在社会群体尺度上，群体的个性构成和环境特征（如栖息地质量、天气、气候）通过对社会动态的影响来影响传播； (3) 在景观尺度上，种群和群落特征（例如宿主密度和遗传结构、宿主和寄生虫多样性）影响病原体动态和疾病影响。两项关键创新支撑了这一提议。首先是我们有潜力在大型飞行围栏中通过实验操纵蝙蝠的社会动态、能量状态和群体组成，以评估个体和群体的属性如何影响病原体入侵和传播的速度。重要的是，我将根据现实世界的环境变化进行实验操作。例如，气候变化可能会影响异温动物的能量状态和麻木状态，城市和工业发展可能会以影响社会动态的方式改变栖息地。我们的实验将模仿这些变化。其次，我们要做好应对野生动物病原体即将入侵、导致种群数量大幅下降的准备。迄今为止，我们已在加拿大中部用无源应答器标记了 10,000 多只自由放养的蝙蝠。我们将监测这些动物在该地区 10 个冬眠区的到达和离开，这提供了一个独特的机会来评估宿主和环境特征对这种具有巨大保护意义的疾病感染前和感染后死亡率的作用。

Infectious diseases of wildlife are an increasing concern as global travel and trade affect pathogen dispersal, and environmental change affects host susceptibility. There is growing realization that pathogens can cause species extinctions and loss of biodiversity and growing appreciation that wildlife diseases are relevant to human public health. Most recent emerging infectious diseases of humans (e.g., SARS, Hendra, Nipah, Marburg, Ebola) appear to have arisen when wildlife, specifically bats, were forced into contact with people due to human development. In North America, hibernating bats also face an urgent conservation threat from the novel fungal disease white-nose syndrome. Despite ecological, economic, public health and conservation implications of wildlife pathogens, we have limited experimental data about host-pathogen dynamics for most wildlife diseases. Therefore, over the long-term, I aim to test a broad hypothesis with theoretical but little experimental support: behavioural and physiological variation among individuals, social groups and populations of hosts affects host-pathogen dynamics and pathogen impacts. My short-term objectives are to use social species of bats to test three predictions arising from this hypothesis: (1) At the individual-scale, personality, and energetics affect individual risk of acquiring and spreading pathogens; (2) At the scale of social groups, personality composition of groups, and environmental characteristics (e.g., habitat quality, weather, climate) affect transmission via their influence on social dynamics; and (3) At the landscape scale, population and community characteristics (e.g., host density and genetic structure, host and parasite diversity) affect pathogen dynamics and disease impacts. Two key innovations underpin this proposal. First is our potential to manipulate social dynamics, energetic state and group composition of bats experimentally in large flight enclosures to assess how attributes of individuals and groups affect rates of pathogen invasion and transmission. Importantly, I will base experimental manipulations on real-world environmental changes. For example, climate change is likely to affect energetic status and use of torpor in heterotherms and urban and industrial development are likely to alter habitat in ways that affect social dynamics. Our experiments will imitate these changes. Second, is our preparedness for the imminent invasion of a wildlife pathogen causing massive population declines. To date we have marked over 10,000 free-ranging bats with passive transponders in central Canada. We will monitor arrival and departure of these animals at 10 hibernacula across the region, providing a unique opportunity to assess the role of host and environmental characteristics on pre- and post-infection mortality for a disease of tremendous conservation significance.