Demographic and behavioral responses to resource shifts and the transmission of rabies in vampire bats

近几十年来，传染病的流行率增加，地理分布范围扩大，据推测，这是生态系统结构和生物多样性受到干扰的结果。本项目通过考察拉丁美洲不断扩大的畜牧业如何影响普通吸血蝙蝠与其直接传播的狂犬病病毒之间的相互作用，对这一现象进行个案研究。吸血蝙蝠分布在拉丁美洲的大部分地区，由于它们利用牲畜作为一种新的和丰富的食物来源，它们经常以高密度存在。该项目将监测秘鲁的一系列野外地点，以了解牲畜密度如何影响吸血蝙蝠数量和狂犬病传播。对吸血蝙蝠的遗传研究将估算出蝙蝠在牲畜饲养区和森林地区内和之间的种群规模和移动速度。将开发数学模型并用于分析影响吸血蝙蝠密度和扩散的人类活动如何影响狂犬病动态。这些模型将使用来自圈养吸血蝙蝠实验感染研究的数据进行参数化，旨在检查感染的时间过程，包括恢复和免疫，目前存在有限的数据。研究人员预测，通过增加吸血蝙蝠的数量和移动速度，家畜形式的补充资源将导致狂犬病从在森林蝙蝠种群中引起罕见但大规模的爆发转变为在家畜地区持续低流行。由于森林砍伐、城市化和牲畜饲养在许多发展中国家都在加剧，迫切需要更好地了解野生动物与病原体的相互作用将如何对这些变化作出反应。该项目将为研究生、博士后学者和研究助理提供培训和职业指导，并鼓励他们各自开发与该项目相关的独立项目。这项工作继续与秘鲁卫生部、秘鲁农业部、圣马科斯大学和美国疾病控制和预防中心建立合作关系；因此，该项目将建立一个强大的基础，以增强发展中国家未来的科学研究和合作能力。最后，这项研究的结果将为拉丁美洲的狂犬病控制工作提供信息，在那里吸血蝙蝠导致了大多数人类和牲畜狂犬病病例。

Infectious diseases have increased in prevalence and expanded their geographic distribution in recent decades, and it has been hypothesized that this is a result of disturbances to ecosystem structure and biodiversity. This project considers a case study of this phenomenon by examining how the expanding livestock rearing industry in Latin America affects interactions between common vampire bats and their directly transmitted rabies viruses. Vampire bats are distributed throughout much of Latin America, where they often exist in high densities due to their opportunistic use of livestock as a novel and abundant food source. This project will monitor a series of field sites in Peru to ask how livestock density affects vampire bat abundance and rabies transmission. Genetic studies of vampire bats will estimate population sizes and movement rates of bats within and between livestock rearing and forested areas. Mathematical models will be developed and used to analyze how human activities that affect vampire bat density and dispersal also affect rabies dynamics. These models will be parameterized using data from experimental infection studies with captive vampire bats, designed to examine the time course of infection, including recovery and immunity, for which limited data currently exist. The investigators predict that by increasing vampire bat abundance and movement rates, supplemental resources in the form of livestock will cause rabies to shift from causing rare but large outbreaks in forest bat populations to constant persistence at low prevalence in livestock areas. Because deforestation, urbanization and livestock rearing are intensifying in much of the developing world, a better understanding of how wildlife-pathogen interactions will respond to such changes is needed urgently. This project will contribute to training and career mentoring for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and research assistants, who will each be encouraged to develop independent projects related to the project. This work continues established collaborations with the Peruvian Ministry of Health, the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture, the University of San Marcos and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; as such, this project will build a strong foundation to empower future scientific research and collaboration in a developing country. Finally, results of this study will inform rabies control efforts in Latin America, where vampire bats cause the majority of human and livestock rabies cases.