US-UK Collaboration: Integrating ecology, epidemiology, and human interests to guide strategic management of zoonoses in complex wildlife reservoirs

野生动物携带着各种各样的病原体，这些病原体可以传播给其他动物和人类。埃博拉和新冠肺炎等疾病严重影响人类健康、农业和野生动物保护。从历史上看，疾病控制方法(如疫苗接种、治疗)侧重于人类或牲畜，而不是野生动物宿主。专注于野生动物的疾病控制在预防人类疾病出现方面可能会更有效，但目前这种方法受到三个因素的限制。首先，许多疾病是以跨景观传播的周期维持的，但众所周知，在如此大的空间尺度上评估生命疾病是出了名的困难，使得对干预措施的反应不可预测。其次，像疫苗这样的工具很难用来控制足够数量的动物，从而真正减少疾病在野外的传播。第三，干预措施通常受到社会限制，既有财政限制(例如，有限的投资资金)，也有社会限制(例如，利益相关者利益冲突)。新技术，包括可以在野生动物中传播的疫苗和微型动物携带的跟踪系统，都有尚未实现的潜力来克服这些限制。该项目将专注于减少吸血蝙蝠传播的狂犬病，这种狂犬病对整个拉丁美洲的健康和农业都有重大影响，但为这项研究开发的方法可以应用于其他重要的野生动物疾病。该项目将通过培训学生和早期职业科学家在现场、实验室和定量方法方面加强研究能力。该项目将进行现场和实验室研究，以测试关于吸血蝙蝠传播狂犬病的流行病学和管理的具体假设。研究人员将：(1)利用动物携带的GPS标签和调查问卷中关于蝙蝠存在的大规模数据和历史狂犬病爆发的现场实验，生成可用于确定人类干扰如何影响蝙蝠数量和扩散的模型；(2)使用圈养蝙蝠和野生吸血蝙蝠进行研究，以确定将影响针对蝙蝠的自我传播狂犬病疫苗的使用的宿主和生态因素；以及(3)使用从田野调查和圈养研究中估计的参数来优化局部控制和区域消除吸血蝙蝠狂犬病的策略，以保持不同利益相关者的要求，例如野生动物保护目标以及改善人和牲畜的健康。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Wild animals host a wide variety of pathogens that can spread to other animals and humans. Suchdiseases, including Ebola and COVID-19, significantly affect human health, agriculture and wildlifeconservation. Historically, disease control methods (e.g. vaccination, therapeutics) have focused onhumans or livestock rather than wild animal reservoirs. Focusing on disease control in wildlife couldbe more effective in preventing disease emergence in humans, but that approach is currently limitedby three factors. First, many diseases are maintained in cycles that spread across landscapes, butwildlife diseases are notoriously difficult to assess at these large spatial scales, making responses tointerventions unpredictable. Second, tools like vaccines have been difficult to administer to sufficientnumbers of animals to actually reduce disease transmission in the wild. Third, interventions areusually bounded by societal constraints, both financial (e.g., limited funds to invest) and sociological(e.g., conflicting stakeholder interests). New technologies, including vaccines that can spread amongwildlife and miniaturized animal-borne tracking systems, have unrealized potential to overcome theselimitations. This project will focus on reducing vampire bat transmitted rabies, which has significanthuman health and agricultural impacts across Latin America, but the methods developed for this studycould be applied to other important wildlife diseases. The project will strengthen researchcapacity through training of students and early career scientists in field, laboratory and quantitative methodologies.This project will conduct field and laboratory research to test specific hypotheses about theepidemiology and management of vampire bat-transmitted rabies. The researchers will: (1) Use fieldexperiments with animal-borne GPS tags and large-scale data on bat presence from questionnairesand historical rabies outbreaks to generate models that can be used to determine how humandisturbance influences bat abundance and dispersal; (2) Conduct studies using captive and wildvampire bats to determine host and ecological factors that will influence the use of self-spreadingrabies vaccines that target bats; and (3) Use parameters estimated from fieldwork and captive studiesto optimize strategies for localized control and regional elimination of vampire bat rabies that preservediverse stakeholder requirements, e.g. wildlife conservation goals as well as improved human andlivestock health.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.