Bioinformatics Starter Grant: Hierarchical Bayesian modeling to investigate climate and land-use drivers in the multi-species ecology of West Nile virus.

生态研究所获得了一笔赠款，用于支持研究制定和实施将生态数据与相关时空尺度的生物模型相结合的方法，以便更好地了解包括西尼罗病毒在内的多物种系统的生态学。这项研究将有两个主要目的。首先，分层贝叶斯（HB）模型将用于整合当地温度和降水测量数据与西尼罗河病毒活动（人类，马和鸟类样本），以评估县到区域尺度的天气如何影响西尼罗河病毒的放大。这些结果将用于实现一个完整的时空模型，该模型包含疾病（WNV）、气候（冬季温度和ENSO）和人类土地利用对20种美国本土鸟类种群丰度的加性和相互作用影响。其次，将从公共卫生、生态、昆虫学和蚊虫控制来源综合描述北美各地病媒丰度和物种组成的现有数据；媒介丰度和组成将从目前在巴尔的摩生态系统研究长期生态研究项目中实施的土地利用梯度采样网络中以县为单位进行采样。本研究的结果将有助于了解虫媒病毒（包括西尼罗河病毒）在引入后的扩增和持续存在的复杂生态系统结构，并可能为城市与农村地区的蚊子减少提供见解。这项研究的最终成果将是综合这两个目标，整合媒介和宿主群落的生态学，以开发一个预测模型，预测气候和土地利用变化情景如何影响节肢动物传播的病毒（包括西尼罗病毒）的生态学及其对本地生态系统的影响。

The Institute of Ecological Studies is awarded a grant in support of research to develop and implement methods to integrate ecological data with biological models at relevant spatial and temporal scales to better understand the ecology of multi-species systems, including West Nile virus (WNV). The research will have two primary aims. First, Hierarchical Bayesian (HB) modeling will be used to integrate data on local temperature and precipitation measures with WNV activity (in human, horse, and bird samples) to assess how county to region-scale weather influence epizootic WNV amplification. The results will be used to implement a fully spatio-temporal model that incorporates the additive and interacting affects of disease (WNV), climate (winter temperatures and ENSO), and human land-use on population abundances for twenty native U.S. bird species. Second, available data describing vector abundance and species composition across North America will be synthesized from public health, ecological, entomological, and mosquito control sources; and vector abundance and composition will be sampled at a sub-county scale from the land-use gradient sampling network currently implemented in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study Long Term Ecological Research project. The results of this study will contribute to an understanding of the complex ecosystem structure that supports arbovirus (including WNV) amplification and persistence after introduction, and may additionally provide insight into mosquito abatement in urban versus rural areas. A final product of this research will be a synthesis of these two aims that integrates the ecology of both vector and host communities to develop a forecast model for how climate and land-use change scenarios may affect the ecology of arthropod-borne viruses (including West Nile virus) and their impact on native ecosystems.