ECOFLU : Understanding the ecology of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in wild bird populations

野生动物种群自然会经历各种各样的感染和疾病。了解它们如何在环境中循环，如何随着时间的推移而演变以及如何影响不同的宿主，是了解它们对不同动物物种的影响以及它们溢出到驯养动物和人类中的潜力的关键。我们目前正在经历一场大规模的禽流感爆发，这对全球范围内的野生鸟类和商业家禽都产生了重大影响。这是一种由一组甲型流感病毒感染而引起的疾病，水禽是其天然宿主。这些病毒通常在野生水禽和水鸟中传播，影响相对较小。然而，在过去一年中，一种称为H5N1的特定亚型禽流感的影响发生了重大变化。野生鸟类死亡率报告最高的是海鸟，仅在苏格兰三个月内就报告了20多万只死亡鸟类。这些是新的宿主，到目前为止，它们相对未受影响，因此我们目前缺乏有关这种疾病如何影响这些新宿主群体的信息，这阻碍了我们对任何可能实施的潜在缓解策略做出明智决定或评估其可能成功的能力。在这个项目中，我们有三个主要目标。首先，我们将跟踪病毒在不同宿主物种中随时间和空间的演变。这将告诉我们可能的传播途径，但也有助于我们跟踪病毒在进化过程中的变化，并确定任何可能改变其致病性或在物种之间跳跃能力的病毒变化。其次，我们将重点关注宿主，并探索有多少比例的鸟类暴露于感染并存活下来。我们将在已经监测多年的人群中进行这项工作，以便了解他们的个人生活史，年龄和迁移路线，以帮助我们确定人口中的哪些特定部分可能更脆弱或在传播中更重要。最后，我们将使用我们收集的数据来创建一个代表不同物种更广泛人群的建模框架，以测试不同人群对这种疾病的适应能力，并将其用作评估和优先考虑潜在缓解措施的工具，以最大限度地减少对宿主种群的影响并限制未来的疾病传播。

Wildlife populations naturally experience a wide range of infections and disease. Understanding how they circulate in the environment, how they are evolving over time and how different hosts are affected is key to understanding both their impact on different animal species and their potential to spill-over into domesticated animals and humans. We are currently experiencing a major outbreak of Avian Influenza that is having a major impact both on wild birds and commercial poultry at a global scale. This is a disease caused by infection by a group of Influenza A type viruses of which water birds are the natural host. These viruses usually circulate in wild waterfowl and shorebirds with relatively little impact. However, the past year has seen a significant change in the impact of one particular subtype of avian influenza called H5N1. Mortality reports in wild birds have been highest in seabirds with over 200,000 dead birds reported over a three month period in Scotland alone. These are novel hosts that up until this point have been relatively unaffected so we currently lack information about how this disease is impacting in these novel host populations, hindering our ability to make informed decisions about any potential mitigation strategies that might be put in place or evaluate their likely success. In this project we have three main objectives. Firstly, we will track the evolution of the virus over time and space across a range of different host species. This will tell us about possible routes of transmission but also help us track how the virus is changing as it evolves and to identify any viral changes that may alter its pathogenicity or its ability to jump between species. Secondly, we will focus on the hosts and explore what proportion of birds are exposed and survive infection. We will do this in populations that have been monitored over many years so their individual life-histories, age, and migration routes are known to help us identify which whether particular parts of the population may be more vulnerable or more important in transmission. Finally we will use the data we are collecting to create a modelling framework that represents the wider population of different species to test how resilient different populations might be to this disease and to use as a tool to evaluate and prioritize potential mitigations that can be put in place to minimise any impact on host populations and limit future disease spread.