EAGER: Integrating animal movement ecology and multi-level social networks to investigate zoonotic disease dynamics

该项目测量并模拟了两种蝙蝠物种之间的运动和社会互动，以及这些行为可能如何影响蝙蝠冠状病毒的传播，例如导致新冠肺炎的SARS-CoV-2病毒在蝙蝠之间以及蝙蝠和人类之间的传播。人畜共患病，如腺鼠疫、莱姆病、流感、埃博拉、狂犬病和新冠肺炎，都是由动物传播给人类的病原体引起的，对人类造成毁灭性的影响。然而，并不是所有潜在的人畜共患病病原体都会出现在人类体内，部分原因是动物的运动及其相互之间和与人类的社会互动影响了病原体的传播和传播。因此，重要的是更多地了解动物的行为，这些动物是人畜共患病的潜在来源，以便更好地了解和预测疾病的动态。病毒将通过分子技术在美国西南部沙漠中的蝙蝠身上进行识别，同样的蝙蝠将被GPS追踪器和射频识别(RFID)标签(与用于识别宠物的相同“微芯片”)跟踪，以了解它们离开栖息地时的飞行模式以及栖息地内蝙蝠之间的接触(“接触追踪”)。所获得的信息将有助于预测病毒在蝙蝠中的传播，并与SARS-CoV-2相关，如果它曾经从人“溢出”到北美蝙蝠的话。这项工作的更广泛影响包括与当地一个科学教育组织合作，向中学生宣传人畜共患疾病和流行病学。该项目还将为新墨西哥州立大学的本科生和研究生提供培训机会，新墨西哥州立大学是一家为拉美裔服务的机构。在动物运动、社会行为和疾病生态学的交叉点上进行研究，是了解动物宿主内人畜共患病动态的关键。动物如何在其环境中移动，以及它们如何与同种和异种动物相互作用，都会影响人畜共患病的传播和传播。该项目将调查动物运动和多物种宿主社会网络接触如何影响地方性冠状病毒和潜在的新型冠状病毒SARS-CoV-2在北美蝙蝠物种内和之间传播的风险。这项工作得到了越来越小的动物跟踪设备的推动，以及使用基因组技术进行病原体检测的进展，使研究团队能够表征单个蝙蝠随着时间的推移的运动、社会互动和“病毒”。通过反复采样蝙蝠病毒，研究人员将确定随着时间的推移，蝙蝠个体携带了哪些病毒株。北美蝙蝠体内有多种冠状病毒毒株，SARS-CoV-2可能会从人类“溢出”到蝙蝠身上。研究人员还将使用GPS跟踪来表征单个蝙蝠的运动，并将使用RFID标记蝙蝠之间的接触和荧光粉跟踪来构建共享栖息地的蝙蝠的多物种社会网络。将蝙蝠的运动和社会行为与它们的病毒结合起来，将有助于我们对人畜共患病病原体的宿主内动态的理解。本科生和研究生将参与这项研究，针对中学的教育资源将帮助被新冠肺炎大流行扰乱生活的学生了解人畜共患病的起源和流行病学的基本概念。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

This project measures and models movement and social interactions in two bat species and how these behaviors may influence spread of bat coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, among bats and between bats and humans. Zoonotic diseases, such as bubonic plague, Lyme disease, flu, Ebola, rabies, and COVID-19, are caused by pathogens transmitted from animals to people, with devastating effects on humans. Not all potentially zoonotic pathogens will emerge into humans, however, in part because movements of animals and their social interactions with each other and with humans affect the transmission and spread of pathogens. It is, therefore, important to know more about behaviors of animals that are potential sources of zoonotic diseases so that disease dynamics can be better understood and predicted. Viruses will be identified by molecular techniques in bats in the desert southwest of the United States, and the same bats will be followed with GPS trackers and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags (the same “microchips” used to identify pets) to understand flight patterns when out of their roosts and contacts among bats within roosts (“contact tracing”). The information obtained will be useful for predicting the spread of viruses in bats, and is of relevance to SARS-CoV-2 should it ever “spill back” from people to North American bats. The broader impacts of this work include a collaboration with a local science education group to educate middle-school students about zoonotic diseases and epidemiology. The project will also provide opportunities for training of undergraduate and graduate students at New Mexico State University, a Hispanic-Serving Institution. Research at the intersection of animal movement, social behavior, and disease ecology is key to understanding the dynamics of zoonotic diseases within animal hosts. How animals move through their environments and how they interact with both conspecifics and heterospecifics can influence the transmission and spread of zoonoses. This project will investigate how animal movement and multi-species host social network contacts shape risk of transmission of both endemic coronaviruses and potentially the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 within and among North American bat species. This work is facilitated by ever-smaller animal tracking devices and advances in pathogen detection using genomic techniques, allowing the research team to characterize the movements, social interactions, and “viromes” of individual bats through time. By repeatedly sampling bat viromes, the researchers will determine which viral strains are harbored by individual bats through time. North American bats host multiple coronavirus strains, and there is a risk that SARS-CoV-2 may “spillback” from humans into bats. The researchers will also characterize the movements of individual bats using GPS tracking, and will use contacts among RFID-tagged bats and fluorescent-powder tracking to construct multi-species social networks for bats that share a roost. Integrating the movement and social behavior of bats with their viromes will advance our understanding of within-host dynamics of zoonotic pathogens. Undergraduate and graduate students will be involved in the research, and educational resources targeted to middle schools will help students whose lives have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic understand the origins of zoonotic diseases and basic concepts in epidemiology.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.