This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2008. The fellowship supports a research and training plan entitled "Allometric scaling and infectious disease dynamics: integrating theory with empirical data" for Barbara A. Han. The host institution for this research is University of Georgia and the sponsoring scientist is Dr. Sonia Altizer.
In recent years, threats arising from emerging diseases have become a major concern for both human and wildlife health. This project examines relationships between host body size, pathogen transmission, and host-pathogen dynamics. Specifically, this research is combining mathematical models of disease with contact patterns of hosts of varying body sizes (allometric scaling) to estimate two key characteristics about diseases: pathogen virulence and transmission. These models generate predictions about diseases in mammals of different sizes that will be evaluated using data collected from the field.
Training objectives include bioinformatics, mathematical modeling, data management, and mentorship. This work will contribute to predicting and managing disease spread in nature, especially where disease emergence is the result of pathogens switching to infect new host species. This project brings together perspectives from evolution, ecology, metabolic theory, and disease-related research to generate broad predictions about disease emergence in free-living mammals that can be tested using data from past studies conducted in the field.
