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

大多数植物和动物可以被非常小的生物体感染，使它们生病。 被感染的植物或动物被称为“宿主”，感染的生物体被称为“病原体”。 宿主和病原体之间的相互作用很重要，因为它通常决定一个人的健康。科学家们现在意识到，宿主-病原体相互作用更加复杂，因为一个宿主可以被许多病原体感染，所有病原体都相互作用，也与宿主相互作用。 同样，一种病原体可以感染几种类型的宿主，一种宿主的反应可以影响另一种宿主是否被感染。 要弄清楚这一切在自然界中是如何发挥作用的，需要精心设计的实验和数学模型，而这个项目提供了两者。 深入了解宿主和病原体至关重要，因为人类正在极大地改变生物世界，在某些地区引入新型宿主和病原体，并将其从其他地区移除。了解生物体的这种获得和损失如何影响疾病的传播对保护科学和公共卫生领域很重要。该研究计划将在疾病生态学和数学生物学领域培训本科生，研究生和高中生，并将通过各种外展活动吸引公众。人类正在全球范围内影响生物多样性模式，这些变化可能会影响传染病的风险和流行。该项目的目标是发展一种多宿主多病原体流行病学理论，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围隔生态系统和田间实验，使用浮游物种及其相关病原体进行测试。这项工作将扩展当前关于多宿主和多病原体群落的理论，并统一独立开发的不同传播模式疾病的理论。 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产生重要进展。这项工作还将深入了解未来对多样性的改变将如何影响人类和野生动物的疾病爆发。该奖项反映了NSF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.