Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: WILD HEALTH: How does environmental health affect wildlife health?

需要对社会经济和全球环境趋势对生物多样性和生态系统服务的复杂相互作用进行创新研究，以帮助开发更多信息丰富的情景，以应对环境和人类发展挑战。为了克服这些挑战，需要结合自然-人类系统的方法和分析。这些方案提供了生物多样性和生态系统服务的改进情景，将土地利用、入侵物种、过度开发、生物多样性、环境变化和污染等直接和间接驱动因素的产出结合起来。由此产生的模型提供了一种最先进的方法，可以实现更准确的定量评估、更好的土地利用和更有效的生态系统服务。这个由美国科学家和两个斯堪的纳维亚国家的科学家组成的国际联盟资助的项目采用了这种方法，旨在研究野生动物皮肤和肠道中的微生物是否与在具有高度地方性微生物多样性的人类中发现的微生物具有积极的健康益处（即，减少过敏，增强抗病能力等）。这项工作还试图确定野生动物及其特有微生物群在不同管理环境下如何和/或是否发生变化。之所以选择北方森林野生动物（驼鹿和田鼠）进行研究，是因为全球约80%的陆地生物多样性是在北方森林中发现的，而且这两个物种可以比较生活在不同栖息地并与生态系统不同部分相互作用的物种。将从这两个物种中采集样本，并检查各种“健康”措施，例如内部和外部微生物群落多样性、寄生虫/病原体感染、身体状况等。工作将侧重于量化微生物在野生动物健康和物种对环境变化/条件的反应中发挥的作用（例如，提供能量、诱导或减少炎症、增加或减少寄生虫/病原体负担）。它还将讨论野生动物的微生物群如何受到土地利用变化、不同森林管理做法、栖息地、饮食等驱动的生物多样性变化的影响。这项工作的更广泛影响包括美国、芬兰和瑞典之间的国际合作。研究结果将有助于更好地理解生物多样性保护面临的挑战以及全球变化和林业管理实践对野生动物的作用。这项工作也可能为改善生态监测提供新的途径。此外，这项工作为确定森林生物多样性是否影响人类健康提供了重要信息，因为森林野生动物微生物组多样性的减少可能会增加寄生虫负担，从而增加人类患人畜共患疾病的风险。其他影响包括研究和教育的整合以及培养学生成为新一代国际学者的一部分。该项目还资助EPSCoR州（即阿拉斯加）的一个机构。该奖项支持参与由来自23个国家的26个资助机构组成的联盟通过贝尔蒙特论坛征集“生物多样性和生态系统服务情景”提案竞争性选择的项目的美国研究人员。该呼吁是一项多边倡议，旨在支持有助于开发情景、模型和决策支持工具的研究项目，以了解和解决我们星球面临的关键问题。竞赛的目标是改进和应用参与式情景方法，以提高研究的相关性和接受度，并解决影响驱动因素和政策干预建模方法方面的差距。它还开发和交流与模型相关的不确定性水平，以改善数据可访问性并填补知识空白。利用这一方法，该资助项目将检验以下假设：环境生物多样性对野生动物健康有积极影响。为了验证这一点，最先进的基因组学方法、分子生物学和生物信息学将与来自森林群落生态学、经验数据和实地实验的数据和测量相结合。大型国际财团为美国参与者提供的资金支持了大型研究的一部分，该研究的重点是阿拉斯加北方森林驼鹿，这些驼鹿受到直接和间接的人类影响。间接影响将包括人类化石燃料消耗的增加，这将导致全球变暖。这种变暖导致北极和北方生态系统的火灾强度和频率增加。直接影响是当人类使用火作为管理森林栖息地以改善野生动物多样性和/或生产力的工具时。虽然在阿拉斯加，燃烧通常会增加驼鹿木质落叶树叶的可用性和多样性，但它也会导致植物生长的幼年阶段，减少地面阴影，增加植物的水分压力。这通过增加多酚类物质和其他结构成分的生产来改变植物资源分配模式。因此，虽然火可以产生更多的食物并支持更高密度的驼鹿，但它们的食物可能营养质量大大降低，这可能会降低个体动物的生产力和存活率。该项目的美国部分研究了植物化学对驼鹿瘤胃微生物组成和功能的影响，以研究对驼鹿健康和种群生产力的影响。研究人员将采集并分析皮肤、鼻腔和驼鹿下胃肠道的微生物组样本，以确定这种影响是否会延伸到动物的其他重要微生物组，以及这些微生物组对野生动物整体健康的影响程度。食物多样性和营养质量影响驼鹿饮食的假设将通过量化驼鹿的饮食来检验，使用从麻醉的野生驼鹿的直肠收集的粪便样本和在野外工作中收集的新鲜粪便样本，这些粪便样本与研究地点驼鹿可获得食物的多样性和丰富性有关。对阿拉斯加州内陆和中南部两个不同驼鹿区未燃烧区和相邻燃烧区固定驼鹿（10只）的瘤胃内容物进行了分析。饮食将使用粪便和食物的表皮烷烃/长链醇特征以及植物DNA元条形码方法进行表征。栖息地食物多样性和营养特征（消化率，单宁等）将在每个研究地点通过植物多样性和丰度的无图调查和标准营养分析程序来确定。本研究还将验证驼鹿饮食影响瘤胃微生物群落多样性和功能的假设。研究人员将利用16s rDNA高通量测序技术，对捕获的每只驼鹿的瘤胃和粪便微生物群进行分析，以验证这一假设。此外，通过使用寄生虫标准方案检查取样个体的外部和肠道寄生虫负荷，将验证驼鹿微生物群落多样性与其寄生虫/病原体负荷负相关的假设。这些结果将使用微生物多样性测量进行比较。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。

Innovative research on the complex interaction of socio-economic and global environmental trends on biodiversity and ecosystem services is needed to help develop more informative scenarios for addressing environmental and human development challenges. To overcome these challenges coupled natural-human systems approaches and analyses are needed. These provide improved scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services that couple the outputs of direct and indirect drivers such as land use, invasive species, overexploitation, biodiversity, environmental change, and pollution. The resulting models provide a methodological state-of-the art that results in more accurate quantitative assessments, better land use, and more effective ecosystem services. Employing this methodology, the funded project, which is an international coalition between US scientists and those from two Scandinavian nations, seeks to examine whether microbes on the skin and in the gut of wildlife have positive health benefits (i.e., fewer allergies, increased disease resistance, etc.) that are comparable to those discovered in humans with high endemic microbial diversity. The work also seeks to determine how and/or if wildlife and their endemic microbiomes change under differently managed environments. Boreal forest wildlife (moose and voles) were selected for study because ~80% of global terrestrial biodiversity is found in boreal forests and because these two species allow comparison between species inhabiting different habitats and interacting with different parts of the ecosystem. Samples will be taken from both species and examined for diverse measures of "health", such as internal and external microbial community diversity, parasite/pathogen infection, body condition, etc. Work will focus on quantifying the role microbes play (e.g., supplying energy, inducing or reducing inflammation, increasing or decreasing parasite/pathogen burden) in wildlife health and species response to environmental changes/conditions. It will also address how the microbiome of wildlife is impacted as a result of changes in biodiversity that is driven by changes in land use, different forest management practices, habitat, diet, etc.). Broader impacts of the work include international collaboration between the US, Finland, and Sweden. Results will help provide better understanding of challenges in biodiversity conservation and the role of global change and forestry management practices on wildlife. The work is also likely to provide new avenues for improved ecological monitoring. In addition, this work provides important information from which to determine whether forest biodiversity impacts human health, via a potential increase in parasite burden due to decreased microbiome diversity in forest wildlife that may increase zoonotic disease risks for humans. Additional impacts include the integration of research and education and the training of students to be part of the new generation of international scholars. The project also funds an institution in an EPSCoR state (i.e., Alaska).This award supports US researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a coalition of 26 funding agencies from 23 countries through the Belmont Forum call for proposals on "Scenarios of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services". The call was a multilateral initiative designed to support research projects that contribute to the development of scenarios, models, and decision-support tools for understanding and solving critical issues facing our planet. The goal of the competition was to improve and apply participatory scenario methods to enhance research relevance and its acceptance and to address gaps in methods for modelling impact drivers and policy interventions. It was also to develop and communicate levels of uncertainty associated with the models, to improve data accessibility and fill gaps in knowledge. Using this methodology, the funded project will test the hypothesis: Environmental biodiversity has a positive effect on wildlife health. To test this, state-of-the-art genomics methods, molecular biology, and bioinformatics will be combined with data and measurements from forest community ecology, empirical data, and field experiments. Funds for US participants in the larger international consortium support the part of the larger study that focuses on Alaskan boreal forest moose that are exposed to both direct and indirect human impacts. Indirect impacts would include the increase in human fossil fuel consumption which is contributing to global warming. This warming contributes to increased fire intensity and frequency in Arctic and boreal ecosystems. Direct impacts are when humans use fire as a tool to manage forest habitats to improve wildlife diversity and/or productivity. Although in Alaska, burning generally increases the availability and diversity of woody deciduous browses for moose, it also results in juvenile stages of plant growth, reduces ground shading, and increases water stress in plants. This changes plant resource allocation patterns by increasing production of polyphenolics and other structural components. Thus, while fire may produce more browse and support higher densities of moose, their food may be of substantially lower nutritional quality, something that can reduce individual animal productivity and survivorship. The US component of this project addresses the impact of plant chemistry on the microbial composition and function of moose rumen to examine impacts on moose health and population productivity. Microbiome samples of skin, nasal, and moose lower gastrointestinal tracts will be taken and analyzed to see if such impacts extend to other important microbiomes of the animals and to what extent these contribute to overall wildlife health. The hypothesis that browse diversity and nutritional quality influence moose diets will be tested by quantifying what moose eat, using fecal samples collected from the rectum of anesthetized wild moose and fresh fecal samples collected during field work associated with characterizing the diversity and abundance of foods available to moose in the study sites. Rumen contents of immobilized moose (ten individuals) in unburned and adjacent burned areas of two different moose ranges in interior and southcentral Alaska will also be analyzed. Diets will be characterized using cuticular alkane/long-chain alcohol signatures of feces and foods as well as plant DNA metabarcoding methodologies. Habitat food diversity and nutritional characteristics (digestibility, tannins, etc.) will be determined at each of the study sites through plotless surveys of plant diversity and abundance and via standard nutritional analytical procedures. This research will also test the hypothesis that moose diets influence the diversity and function of rumen microbial communities. Rumen and fecal microbiota will be taken and analyzed from each of the moose captured and sampled using high throughput DNA sequencing of 16s rDNA to test this hypothesis. In addition, the hypothesis that microbial community diversity of moose is negatively related to their parasite/pathogen loads will be tested by examining external and intestinal parasite loads of sampled individuals using standard protocols for parasites. These results will be compared using microbial diversity measures.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.