Habitat and coinfection as drivers of heterogeneity in cross-scale wildlife infectious disease processes

为了预测和控制传染病的传播，了解“超级传播者”的作用是很重要的。这些宿主比大多数其他受感染个体更常传播疾病。为了了解超级传播者，该项目将研究对感染的免疫力、宿主的饮食以及宿主是否感染了其他寄生虫，如何在个体对病原体的易感性和传播感染的能力方面产生差异。为此，该项目将开发病毒传播的数学框架，以预测食物资源和寄生虫感染如何首先影响个体被感染的风险，然后影响疾病在人群和地区之间的传播。这些预测将通过感染了普马拉汉坦病毒的田鼠进行实验室和实地实验来验证。这个项目的结果将揭示为什么有些人成为超级传播者，而另一些人却没有。这与改善对这种汉坦病毒的监测和管理有关，这种病毒经常从其田鼠宿主宿主溢出，感染人类，并感染其他与人类和农业健康有关的病原体。该项目还将支持培训来自美国各地的高中科学教师，为他们提供在芬兰进行实际研究的经验。这将为他们提供活动和材料，用于向高中生讲授新出现的传染病的重要性。本研究将考察生境质量和寄生虫共同感染对感染人畜共患病原体普马拉汉坦病毒的野生田鼠的个体效应和协同效应。该项目将发展新的数学理论，将饮食和共感染与病原体传播机械地联系起来，以预测自下而上（饮食驱动）和自上而下（共感染驱动）的过程如何相互作用，推动超级传播者的出现，以及这种个体水平的变化如何扩大到影响种群和景观水平的病原体传播。这些预测将通过实验室田鼠感染实验和强大的操作实验进行验证，这些实验包括对森林中的野生田鼠种群进行补充喂养和除虫处理。通过同时开发数学模型并将其与经验数据相结合，该项目将量化栖息地和共同感染如何影响(1)个体宿主感染微寄生虫的能力，(2)控制本地传播的人口统计学和接触过程，以及(3)决定疾病空间传播的扩散率和景观属性。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。

In order to predict and control the spread of infectious diseases, it is important to understand the role of "superspreaders". These are hosts who transmit disease more often than most other infected individuals. To understand superspreaders this project will investigate how immunity to infections, host diet, and whether or not the host is infected with other parasites creates variation among individuals in susceptibility to pathogens and the ability to transmit infections. To do so, this project will develop mathematical frameworks of virus spread, to predict how food resources and infection with a parasite will first shape the risk that an individual will become infected, and then, will shape the spread of disease across populations and landscapes. These predictions will be tested using laboratory and field experiments with bank voles infected with Puumala hantavirus. The results of this project will shed new light on why some individuals become superspreaders and others do not. This has relevance to improving surveillance and management of this hantavirus, which regularly spills over from its vole reservoir host to infect humans, as well to other pathogens of concern to human and agricultural health. The project will also support the training of high school science teachers from across the United States, providing them with a hands-on research experience in Finland. This will equip them with activities and materials to use to teach high school students about the importance of emerging infectious diseases.This research will examine the individual and synergistic effects of habitat quality and helminth coinfection on wild bank voles infected with the zoonotic pathogen, Puumala hantavirus. The project will develop novel mathematical theory to mechanistically link diet and coinfection with pathogen transmission to predict how bottom-up (diet-driven) and top-down (coinfection-driven) processes interact to drive the emergence of superspreaders, and how this individual-level variation scales up to influence pathogen transmission at the population- and landscape-level. These predictions will be tested using both laboratory vole infection experiments and powerful manipulative experiments involving supplemental feeding and de-worming treatments of wild vole populations in forests. By concurrently developing mathematical models and integrating them with empirical data, this project will quantify how habitat and coinfection influence (1) individual host competence for microparasite infection, (2) demographic and contact processes governing local transmission and (3) dispersal rates and landscape attributes that determine spatial spread of disease.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.