Collaborative Research: Ecological Interactions between Sudden Oak Death and Lyme Disease in California

一种毁灭性的植物病原体--枯萎疫霉(Phytophthora Ramorum)正在席卷加利福尼亚州的橡树林地，它会导致橡树猝死。这种新疾病有可能对当地脊椎动物种群产生深远影响。反过来，脊椎动物种群(如老鼠、松鼠、蜥蜴)通过影响虱媒的数量和感染，极大地影响人类接触莱姆病(LD)的风险。这项研究将整合现场、实验室和建模工作。首先，实地研究和实验室研究相结合，将提供有关个别寄主物种对加州LD风险的贡献的信息。其次，将比较特定脊椎动物群体在高和低超氧化物歧化酶影响地点的丰度。第三，特定宿主对超氧化物歧化酶的反应将被用来构建模型，以预测超氧化物歧化酶将如何改变人类接触LD的风险。第四，从这些模型中产生的特定假设将通过评估扁虱丰度和在SOD影响高和低的地区的感染率来检验。我们的研究将美国最流行的媒介传播疾病(LD)的生态学嵌入到一种毁灭性的植物传染病(SOD)的生态学中，并特别询问这两种疾病系统是如何相互作用的。超氧化物歧化酶的爆发为确定人类传染病如何受到外来森林病原体的影响提供了一个新的机会。这项研究为当前植物病原体和害虫(例如山毛榉树皮病、铁杉绵毛虫、吉普赛飞蛾)的流行提供了一个模型，这些病原体和害虫极有可能极大地改变北美森林的构成，对人类健康可能产生严重后果。

A devastating plant pathogen, Phytophthora ramorum, which causes the disease Sudden Oak Death (SOD), is sweeping through oak woodlands of California. This new disease has the potential to profoundly affect local vertebrate populations. Vertebrate populations (e.g., mice, squirrels, lizards), in turn, strongly influence risk of human exposure to Lyme disease (LD) via their impacts on numbers and infection of tick vectors. This research will integrate field, laboratory, and modeling efforts. First, a combination of field and lab studies will furnish information on individual host species' contributions to LD risk in California. Second, the abundance of specific groups of vertebrates will be compared in sites of high versus low SOD impact. Third, responses by specific hosts to SOD will be used to construct models to predict how SOD will change risk of human exposure to LD. Fourth, specific hypotheses arising from these models will be tested by assessing tick abundance and infection prevalence in areas of high and low SOD impact.Our research embeds the ecology of the most prevalent vector-borne disease of humans in the United States (LD) within the ecology of a devastating infectious disease of plants (SOD), and specifically asks how these two disease systems interact. The outbreak of SOD presents a novel opportunity to determine how a human infectious disease is impacted by an exotic forest pathogen. Such research provides a model for current epidemics of plant pathogens and pests (e.g., beech bark disease, hemlock woolly adelgid, gypsy moth) that in all likelihood will dramatically change the composition of North American forests, with potentially strong consequences for human health.