DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Intestinal Parasites, Acorn Masts, and Population Dynamics of Peromyscus

传染病可能会对自然动物种群的健康和稳定产生重大影响。白脚鼠(Permyscus Leucopus)和鹿鼠(P.manulatus)的数量已被发现由于橡子杆上食物供应的高峰而波动。在Permyscus中发现的肠道病原体很可能在很大程度上导致了种群崩溃。这个项目的目标是了解传染病如何导致动物种群在一段时间内崩溃或循环。关于人口学和感染的长期数据将被用来量化疾病对个体生存和繁殖力的影响。此外，试验田操作将展示疾病和食物对Permyscus种群动态的致病作用和相互作用。拟议的实验将有助于确定传染病如何影响自然动物种群。这项工作很重要，因为对于大多数感染人类的动物源性疾病爆发，我们对动物生态中的哪些因素导致疾病爆发知之甚少。此外，疾病发病率和种群丰度之间的一般关系对人类和动物种群中新病原体的出现具有重要意义。最后，这项工作将有助于解决在自然种群中驱动疾病并威胁到受疾病威胁的动物种群生存的关键生态因素。

Infectious disease may substantially impact the health and stability of natural animal populations. White-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) and deer mouse (P. maniculatus) populations have been found to fluctuate due to peaks in food availability from oak acorn masts. It is likely that intestinal pathogens identified in Peromyscus contribute substantially to population crashes. The goal of this project is to understand how infectious disease can cause animal populations to crash or cycle throughout time. Long-term data on demography and infection will be used to quantify the effect of disease on individual survival and fecundity. In addition, experimental field manipulations will demonstrate the causative effects and interactions of disease and food on population dynamics of Peromyscus. The proposed experiments will help determine how infectious disease impacts natural animal populations. This work is important because for most animal-born disease outbreaks that infect humans we know little about what factors in the animal's ecology drive disease outbreaks. In addition, the general relationship between disease incidence and population abundance has important implications for the emergence of new pathogens in human and animal populations. Finally, this work will help resolve the critical ecological factors that drive disease in natural populations and threaten the survival of animal populations threatened by disease.