EID: Ecological Drivers of Rodent-borne Disease Outbreaks: Trophic Cascades and Dispersal Waves.

气候变化被认为会影响许多啮齿动物传播的人畜共患疾病，如鼠疫、媒介传播的人畜共患巴尔通体病和汉坦病毒疾病。该项目团队将评估营养级联假说（TCH），该假说是用来解释与美国西南部气候变化相关的人畜共患疾病的人类风险水平变化的。本研究将(1)测量啮齿动物食物资源（植物覆盖和净初级产量、坚果/浆果/种子产量和地面节肢动物种群）、啮齿动物/媒介库丰度和啮齿动物病原体感染流行率对气象事件（夏季季风和厄尔尼诺-南方涛动[ENSO]现象）的响应；(2)评估气象数据和各种遥感（卫星）图像在准确预测这些响应方面的有用性。(3)建立空间和时间明确的模型，描述人口和人口密度随气候和生态系统净初级生产的变化，以及导致汉坦病毒、鼠疫和巴尔通体传播的几种啮齿动物物种的扩散模式和速率。这些模型将更广泛地作为可推广的预测模型的原型，应用于世界各地其他生态系统中的啮齿动物传播疾病。随着全球气候变化继续改变区域气象模式，这些模型可能有助于预测病媒传播疾病的范围扩大，从而能够实施适当的规划和缓解战略，以促进公共卫生。

Climate variability is thought to affect a number of rodent-borne zoonotic diseases such as plague, vector-borne zoonotic bartonellosis and hantaviral diseases. This project team will evaluate the Trophic Cascade Hypothesis (TCH), an hypothesis that was developed to explain changing levels of human risk for zoonotic diseases associated with climate variability in the U.S. Southwest. This study will (1) measure the responses of rodent food resources (plant cover and net primary production, nut/berry/acorn production, and ground-dwelling arthropod populations), rodent/vector reservoir abundance, and pathogen infection prevalences in rodents, to meteorological events (summer monsoons and El Nino - Southern Oscillation [ENSO] phenomena), (2) assess the usefulness of meteorological data and various remotely-sensed (satellite) imagery in accurately predicting these responses, and (3) develop spatially- and temporally-explicit models that characterize both demographic and population density changes with climate and ecosystem net primary production, as well as dispersal patterns and rates for several rodent species responsible for hantavirus, plague and Bartonella transmission. These models will serve more broadly as prototypes for more generalizable predictive models that may be applied to rodent-borne diseases in other ecosystems throughout the world. As global climate change continues to alter regional meteorological patterns, the models may prove useful in predicting range expansions of vector-borne diseases, thereby allowing appropriate planning and mitigation strategies to be implemented for public health enhancement.