LONG-DISTANCE DISPERSAL AND DISEASE SPREAD UNDER INCREASED ECOLOGICAL COMPLEXITY
NSF/NIH/USDA/BBSRC Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) Program through USDA-NIFA Award 2022-67015-38059
Much of the theory regarding epidemic spread is understandably anchored in simplified conditions of single outbreak sites, uniform hosts, and deterministic epidemic responses. The global objective of this proposal is to evaluate multiple outbreaks, complex host communities, and different sources of stochastic transmission during the spatiotemporal spread of epidemics caused by pathogens with long-distance dispersal (LDD). This will be done by addressing four hypotheses:1. Locations of multiple sources of epidemic outbreak can be imputed from population dynamic models. 2. Ecological spillover effects influence the spread of LDD epidemics and the observed relationships between disease spread and taxonomic diversity.3. Robust predictions of pathogen transmission require understanding the effects and sources of uncertainty.4. A unifying framework of biological processes emerges across LDD diseases incorporating diverse hosts, pathogens, and environments evolving with time.These hypotheses will be addressed with a set of hosts and pathogens of highly divergent taxonomy, but which share the common characteristic of potential for LDD. The six model systems are foot-and-mouth disease of livestock, West Nile Virus, sudden oak death, cucurbit downy mildew, hop powdery mildew, and wheat stripe rust.
Duration September 1, 2022- August 31 2026
Investigators
Faculty
Chris Mundt (PI) Oregon State University
Chris Jones (co-PI) North Carolina State University
Sharmodeep Bhattacharyya (co-PI) Oregon State University
Peter Ojiambo (co-PI) North Carolina State University
Lee Cohnstaedt (co-PI) USDA ARS
Caterina Scoglio (co-PI) Kansas State University
Students
Publications
Presentations
Outreach
Supported by United State Department of Agriculture under AFRI competitive grant 2022-67015-38059. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USDA.