The general question of how epizootics are initiated and terminated in marine invertebrate populations and how this process is supported by transmission provides a basis for expanding the evaluation of marine disease outbreaks. Addressing this question requires development of a theoretical framework for disease transmission among invertebrates in marine systems. Such a framework will contribute to the general advancement of the understanding of the Ecology of Marine Infectious Diseases (EMID). This proposal outlines a combined experimental and modeling effort that will provide a general theory for marine invertebrate diseases. The model will be informed using Dermo disease, caused by Perkinsus marinus, in Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica), as an experimental system. However, the model will be applicable to all sessile or nearly sessile species whose movement is restricted to small scales (e.g. bivalves, gastropods, sea urchins, corals) and to a range of hydrodynamic regimes from estuaries to lagoons to coral reef tracts. This project is interdisciplinary and is integrated across several disciplines. The team has a unique mixture of expertise in molluscan pathology and epizootiology, genetics, and modeling of coastal and estuarine systems, disease processes and the genetic milieu, as well as a long history of successful collaborative research. By integrating our expertise across disciplines, this project promises to provide novel insights into the disease transmission process for infectious diseases that are poorly described by traditional susceptible-infected-resistant models built upon contact rates. This deficiency in modeling disease transmission is widespread across many taxa of sessile marine organisms. The project also responds to the recommendations in EMID workshops for the development of general frameworks for marine diseases that can be applied to specific systems and to understanding the determinants of transmission of diseases and the spread of pathogens by environmental factors.
The results of this project will provide an important advancement in the theoretical basis for modeling diseases and disease transmission in marine systems. This project will contribute to the training of students and early career scientists in disciplines of genetics, pathology, genomics, and population and circulation modeling that is needed to solve many of the important problems associated with fisheries and marine coastal systems. Project results will be disseminated through scientific conferences, publication in the peer-review literature, and websites. Project results will be used in ongoing outreach efforts through a collaborative outreach program between the Department of STEM Education and the Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography at Old Dominion University. Additional outreach will be through the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary and the Bayshore Discovery Project, organizations engaged in public outreach for Delaware Bay.
