The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. Meggan Craft to work with Dr. Daniel Haydon at the University of Glasgow in the UK.
The majority of emerging infectious diseases infect multiple host species. Despite this, little is known about the mechanisms that maintain a generalist viral pathogen in a multi-host system. In response to this important deficiency, this research addresses questions relating to the dynamics of multi-host pathogens and emergent diseases by developing and analyzing a multi-host model parameterized with data based on recently collected fieldwork. The objective of this project is to use mathematical models to examine hypotheses about how a multi-host pathogen like canine distemper virus (CDV) is maintained and persists in multiple host communities. (In 1994 CDV killed a third of Serengeti lions, was implicated in the local extinction of the African wild dog, continues to kill domestic dogs, and still circulates in the ecosystem.) A spatial, age-structured, multi-host model of disease transmission among Serengeti carnivores will address four specific questions: Which species comprise the maintenance community for CDV and what is the persistence time of CDV in the various non-maintenance species?; Can we characterize the spatiotemporal pattern of infection?; How might co-infection with another pathogen affect persistence?; How does dog vaccination influence CDV dynamics in wildlife populations? What control strategies in wild and domestic carnivores are feasible in this ecosystem?
Studying the basic ecology of pathogen maintenance and circulation among Serengeti carnivores will provide practical applications to the conservation of carnivores and human livelihoods. The theoretical model developed in this project will not only contribute to the understanding of disease dynamics in the Serengeti but also provide specific management recommendations. The resultant models and associated methods for estimating the parameters from empirical data will provide tools that could be applied to other ecosystems. Theoretical approaches to real-life conservation actions will make future disease programs more effective, a much-needed strategy in an era of increasing emerging diseases. Viable multi-host pathogen models are critical to understanding how to manage emergent and re-emergent disease threats. Most importantly, developing more effective disease control programs will have potential applications to human and animal health worldwide.
