Collaborative Research: Development and empirical tests of a mechanistic multi-host, multi-pathogen theory

大多数植物和动物都可以被非常小的生物体感染，从而使它们生病。被感染的植物或动物被称为“宿主”，而感染的生物体被称为“病原体”。了解宿主和病原体之间的相互作用很重要，因为它往往决定一个人的健康。科学家们现在开始意识到宿主-病原体的相互作用更为复杂，因为一个宿主可以被许多病原体感染，所有这些病原体在与宿主相互作用的同时也相互作用。同样，一种病原体可以感染几种类型的宿主，而一种宿主的反应会影响另一种宿主是否被感染。要弄清楚这一切在大自然中是如何发生的，需要精心设计的实验和数学模型，而这个项目提供了这两者。加深对宿主和病原体的了解至关重要，因为人类正在极大地改变生物世界，在某些地区引入新类型的宿主和病原体，并从其他地区消除它们。了解这些生物的得失如何影响疾病的传播，对保护科学和公共卫生领域非常重要。该研究计划将培养疾病生态学和数学生物学领域的本科生、研究生和高中生，并将通过各种外展活动吸引公众。人类正在影响全球的生物多样性格局，这些变化可能影响传染病的风险和流行。该项目的目标是建立一个多宿主多病原体的机械流行病学理论，解释宿主之间和病原体之间的竞争如何共同塑造疾病动态。为了确定竞争如何改变疾病的放大或稀释，将开发数学模型，并通过基于实验室的中生态和实地实验，使用浮游生物物种及其相关病原体进行测试。这项工作既扩展了现有的多宿主和多病原体群落理论，又统一了不同传播方式疾病独立发展的理论。本研究的理论-数据配对方法可能会在流行病学理论和疾病生态学方面取得重要进展。这项工作还将深入了解未来多样性的变化将如何影响人类和野生动物的疾病爆发。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Most plants and animals can be infected by very small organisms that can make them sick. The infected plant or animal is called a "host" and the infecting organism is called a "pathogen". The interaction between hosts and pathogens is important to understand because it often determines one's health. Scientists are now becoming aware that the host-pathogen interaction is more complicated because one host can be infected by many pathogens, all of whom interact with each other as well as with the host. Likewise, one type of pathogen can infect several types of hosts, and how one host responds can influence whether another host becomes infected. Figuring out how all this plays out in Nature requires carefully designed experiments and mathematical models and this project provides both. Developing a deeper understanding of hosts and pathogens is critical because humans are dramatically altering the biological world, introducing new types of hosts and pathogens in some areas and removing them from others. Understanding how such gains and losses of organisms influences the spread of disease is important to the fields of conservation science and public health. This research program will train undergraduate, graduate, and high school students in the fields of disease ecology and mathematical biology, and will engage the public through a variety of outreach activities. Humans are impacting biodiversity patterns globally and these changes can influence the risk and prevalence of infectious diseases. The goal of this project is to develop a mechanistic multi-host multi-pathogen epidemiological theory that explains how between-host and between-pathogen competition jointly shape disease dynamics. To determine how competition alters the amplification or dilution of diseases, mathematical models will be developed and tested using planktonic species and their associated pathogens via laboratory based mesocosm and field experiments. This work will both extend current theory on multi-host and multi-pathogen communities as well as unify theory developed independently for diseases with different transmission modes. The theory-data pairing approach of this study is likely to generate important advances in epidemiological theory and disease ecology. This work will also yield insight into how future alterations to diversity will affect disease outbreaks in humans and wildlife.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.