Individuals, energetics and infectious disease

随着全球旅行和贸易影响病原体的传播，以及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。越来越多的人意识到病原体可能导致物种灭绝和生物多样性的丧失，人们越来越认识到野生动物疾病与人类公共健康有关。最近出现的大多数人类传染病(如SARS、亨德拉、尼帕、马尔堡、埃博拉)似乎都是在野生动物，特别是蝙蝠由于人类发展而被迫与人接触时发生的。在北美，冬眠蝙蝠也面临着一种新的真菌疾病白鼻症的紧迫保护威胁。尽管野生动物病原体具有生态、经济、公共卫生和保护方面的意义，但我们对大多数野生动物疾病的寄主-病原体动态的实验数据有限。因此，从长远来看，我的目标是检验一个理论上但几乎没有实验支持的广泛假说：个人、社会群体和宿主群体之间的行为和生理差异影响宿主-病原体动态和病原体影响。我的短期目标是使用蝙蝠的群居物种来检验这一假设产生的三个预测：(1)在个体尺度上，个性和能量影响个体获得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(例如栖息地质量、天气、气候)通过其对社会动态的影响来影响传播；以及(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)影响病原体的动态和疾病影响。这一提议的基础是两项关键创新。首先是我们在大型飞行舱内通过实验控制蝙蝠的社会动态、能量状态和群体组成的潜力，以评估个人和群体的属性如何影响病原体入侵和传播的比率。重要的是，我将以真实世界的环境变化为基础进行实验操作。例如，气候变化可能会影响能量状态，在恒温和城市和工业发展中使用麻木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，是我们为即将到来的野生动物病原体入侵做好了准备，这种病原体导致了种群的大规模下降。到目前为止，我们已经在加拿大中部用被动应答器标记了10,000多只自由放飞的蝙蝠。我们将在整个地区的10个冬眠期监测这些动物的到达和离开，提供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.