Emerging Infectious Diseases in Amphibians: from Individuals to Community Effects

了解新发传染病（EIDs）的生态学和进化是对灭绝进行更广泛调查的关键。虽然确定灭绝的原因总是具有挑战性，候选物种很少，但两栖动物似乎是一个理想的模型，因为越来越多的证据表明，我们正面临着全球种群数量的下降，近10%的两栖动物物种接近灭绝，另有32%的两栖动物物种被列为受威胁物种。在许多原因中，突发性传染病（eid），如拉纳病毒，已被确定为造成大规模死亡的原因。在关于全球两栖动物数量下降的普遍争论的背景下，我正在进行的研究计划的目标是调查这种疾病的生态学和进化，并了解它如何导致病原体引起的灭绝。此外，我认为这个研究系统对于研究生态和进化过程之间的联系以及在不同组织水平上调节宿主-寄生虫共同进化结果的机制的理解是理想的。

Understanding Emerging Infectious diseases (EIDs) ecology and evolution is a key to the more general investigations of extinction. While determining the cause of extinction is always challenging and candidate species are few, amphibian appear to be an ideal model as increasing evidence suggests that we are facing a global population decline with nearly 10% of the populations of all amphibian species close to extinction and a further 32% being classified as threatened. Among many causes, Emergent Infectious Diseases (EIDs) such as Ranavirus have been identified to be responsible for massive die-offs. In the context of the general debate over global amphibian population decline, the objective of my ongoing research program is to investigate the ecology and evolution of such disease and to understand how it can lead to pathogen-induced extinctions. Additionally, I consider this study system to be ideal to investigate questions with regards to the links between ecological and evolutionary processes and the understanding of mechanisms that modulate host-parasite coevolutionary outcomes at different level of organization.