This symposium at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology will bring together prominent researchers working in the areas of eco-immunology and disease ecology and to provide a forum to review research in their respective subfields. It will foster collaborations across fields through the discussion of philosophical and empirical research approaches, and generate ideas on how to best utilize current technologies to address the common questions. Disease resistance is a function of pathogen dynamics including prevalence and virulence (disease ecology), but is also driven by the internal physiological state of an individual, including host immune function (eco-immunology). Despite the interconnectedness between the two disciplines the majority of research has focused on only one level of analysis, either ultimate (evolution and ecology of parasites and their effects on life histories) or a proximate (how environmental variables affect immune responses). However, the effects of ecological and evolutionary factors on susceptibility to disease are driven not only by environmental variation in diseases and their vectors but also by differences in host immune function that alters disease susceptibility across individuals. The goal of the symposium is to critically review recent advances in the disciplines of eco-immunology and disease ecology, and to integrate both the proximate and ultimate perspectives into a common theoretical framework.
The primary result of this project was the symposium "Bridging th eGap Between Eco-Immunology and Disease Ecology" at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in Salt Lake City Utah, January 2011. This symposium helped to initiate discourse between the fields of Eco-Immunology and Disease Ecology. The continuing development of these two scientific fields is critical especially in light of a wide variety of infectious diseases (e.g., AIDS, influenza, West Nile virus), which display pronounced fluctuations in response to environmental changes in both humans and non-human animals. Although some of this variation is undoubtedly due to fluctuations in disease prevalence, changes within the host's immune system likely contribute to changes in disease susceptibility as well. Hopefully the merging of these two fields will help shed light on ways to mitigate the spread of potentially harmful pathogens in both animal and human populations. Overall the symposium was largely successful. This symposium was largely successful, with 10 international symposium participants from both fields presenting. The participants included women, underrepresented groups, full, associate and assistant professors, and researchers from large institutions and smaller teaching schools. In addition there were 2 full days of complimentary sessions for this symposium, including both oral and poster presentations, many presented by students and postdoctoral research associates. This experience provided valuable training to students and postdoctoral researchers as well as valuable networking within the field. Lastly, the symposium initiated discourse among researchers from the different fields resulting in 6 peer-reviewed manuscripts to appear in the journal "Integrative and Comparative Biology" in the fall 2011.
