EAGER: Are coral diseases contagious?

疾病被认为是加勒比海珊瑚面临的最大威胁之一。然而，人们对海洋疾病，特别是珊瑚疾病知之甚少。识别珊瑚病原体已被证明是困难和逃避的，许多珊瑚疾病被认为是传染性的，这表明感染是由病原体从一个群体传播到另一个群体造成的。然而，很少有研究验证这一假设，该项目将纳入空间流行病学或疾病地图，以洞察疾病是否聚集并遵循传染病模型。这将通过在加勒比的两个空间尺度上采用分层抽样设计来实现。这项研究还将纳入有和没有最近频繁热应激历史的地点，以检验另一种假说，即珊瑚疾病不具有传染性，但是热应激造成的次要影响的结果，例如来自珊瑚正常菌群的机会性病原体增加或珊瑚免疫系统受损。这种方法将与实验相结合，以检验珊瑚疾病是否真的可以传播。迫切需要确定珊瑚疾病，预测其流行情况，并确定它们是否具有传染性。这个项目将帮助我们了解珊瑚疾病的病因，从而告诉我们人类的干预是否有助于减少其流行率和负面后果。虽然微生物在珊瑚疾病中发挥了作用，但许多珊瑚疾病可能不会传播。因此，我们还需要纳入环境阈值参数，这可能更有可能是驱动珊瑚疾病动态的潜在机制。这一结果将对疾病建模和预测当代和未来的珊瑚疾病暴发具有重要意义。这一提议的更广泛影响可能会改变我们对珊瑚疾病的理解，采用空间生态学和流行病学方法。首席调查员将培训珊瑚礁生物学和生态学方面的代表性不足的群体，并在该项目期间培训一名博士水平的研究生。此外，首席调查员将就珊瑚礁生态系统服务的重要性开展公众宣传活动。

Diseases are believed to be one of the greatest threats to corals in the Caribbean. Yet, very little is known about marine diseases in general and coral diseases in particular. Identifying coral pathogens has proven difficult and evasive and many coral diseases are assumed to be infectious, suggesting that infection is caused by pathogens being passed from colony to colony. However, few studies have tested this assumption and this project will incorporate spatial epidemiology, or disease mapping, to provide insight into whether diseases cluster and follow a contagious-disease model. This will be accomplished by using a hierarchical sampling design over two spatial scales in the Caribbean. The study will also incorporate locations with and without a recent history of frequent thermal stress to also test the alternate hypothesis that coral diseases are not infectious but are the result of secondary effects due to thermal stress such as the increase of opportunistic pathogens from the normal flora of the coral or compromised coral immune systems. This approach will be combined with experiments to examine whether coral diseases are indeed transmissible. There is great urgency to identify coral diseases, predict their prevalence, and determine whether they are infectious or not. This project will help provide an understanding of the etiology of coral diseases, which can then inform us whether human intervention will help reduce their prevalence and negative outcomes. Although microbes play a role in coral disease, many coral diseases might not be transmissible. Therefore, we also need to incorporate environmental threshold parameters, which may be more likely as an underlying mechanism driving coral-disease dynamics. The results will have important implications for modeling diseases and predicting contemporary and future coral disease outbreaks. The Broader Impacts of this proposal are potentially transformative with regards to our understanding of coral disease by taking a spatial ecology and epidemiological approach. The principal investigator will train underrepresented groups in coral reef biology and ecology as well as train a Ph. D. level graduate student during this project. Additionally, the principal investigator will conduct public outreach activities on the importance of coral reef ecosystem services.