Title: Interacting disturbances: leaf to landscape dynamics of emerging disease, fire and drought in California coastal forests
PI: David Rizzo, University of California - Davis
Summary: This research aims to better understand how the interaction of multiple factors like wildfire, drought, biodiversity and nutrient cycles can interact to regulate disease dynamics. Using long-term studies of sudden oak death, estimated to have killed millions of trees in the western U.S., scientists hope to gain new insights about how the emergence, persistence and spread of a pathogen is controlled by environmental disturbance.
Title: Transmission and coevolutionary dynamics drive the evolution of generalist and specialist viruses
PI: Samantha Forde, University of California - Santa Cruz
Summary: This project will use a simplified laboratory system of E. coli bacteria and its viruses as a model to study why some viruses have evolved the ability to infect multiple host species, while others can only infect one. By combining experiments at all levels of virus and host interaction--from genes to cells to populations--with a mathematical modeling framework, this work will further a general understanding of the dynamics of disease in natural systems and help to improve public health initiatives.
Title: Modeling the effects of heterogeneity in water quality on cholera disease dynamics
PI: Joseph Tien, Ohio State University
Summary: Deadly outbreaks of cholera among people in Haiti, Angola and elsewhere can broadly be blamed on poor water quality. However, more knowledge is needed about how the spread of disease relates to the distribution and variation of water quality and treatment facilities across different types of communities (such as shanty-towns, tent camps and commercial centers). This study will use mathematical models and in-depth analyses of outbreaks to investigate how these differences affect the abi
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| Contact: Cheryl Dybas cdybas@nsf.gov 703-292-7734 National Science Foundation Source:Eurekalert |