IGN 16
Heterogeneity in Animal Disease Ecology: Then and Now

Friday, August 14, 2015: 8:00 AM-9:30 AM
345, Baltimore Convention Center
Organizer:
Shweta Bansal, Georgetown University
Co-organizer:
Ian Carroll, Georgetown University
Moderator:
Shweta Bansal, Georgetown University
Disease among animals is a major concern in wildlife conservation biology, creates risk for producers of livestock and poultry, and affects public health through zoonotic disease emergence. Transmission and spread of diseases among wildlife and between species can be complicated by spatial, temporal and individual heterogeneities. Naturally, heterogeneity becomes a major focus when variation induces disease spread that would not arise under average conditions. Textbook examples include transmission or contact heterogeneity that create insuppressible epidemics. The speakers in this session will describe how accounting for heterogeneity has changed their understanding of a particular animal disease system. To emphasize the transformations within disease research, to promote retrospection at ESAs Centennial meeting, and to experiment with the Ignite ESA format, the session also features paired “Then” & “Now” presentations from five different research groups. Lab principles or postdoctoral investigators will provide a glimpse of the early paradigms concerning a particular host and pathogen. More junior scientists from each lab will follow-up with current research, emphasizing new results on heterogeneity in the disease system previously described. The speaker pairs will aim to demonstrate how wildlife disease ecology has eclipsed the foundational studies that typically controlled, or ignored, heterogeneity? The participating research groups will cover a wide range of disease systems and methodologies. The animals and diseases addressed include pneumonia in Bighorn sheep, viral zoonoses among bats, fungal parasites on ants, and desert tortoise respiratory tract infections. Modeling plays a vital role in understanding heterogeneity and also features strongly in the session.
 Representing contact heterogeneity: Scaling up from a partially observed network
Colleen Webb, Colorado State University; Michael Tildesley, University of Nottingham; Uno Wennergren, Linkopings University
 Representing contact heterogeneity: Applications to wildlife disease
Erin E. Gorsich, Colorado State University; Clint Leach, Colorado State University; Colleen Webb, Colorado State University
 Who wags the tail of the heterogenity distribution?
Peter Hudson, Penn State University; Kezia Manlove, Washington State University; Isabella M. Cattadori, Penn State University; Andrew P. Dobson, Princeton University
 The tail's tale: Can macroparasite aggregation models resolve questions about microparasite persistence?
Kezia Manlove, Washington State University; Paul Chafee Cross, US Geological Survey; Frances Cassirer, Idaho Dept. of Fish and Game; Raina K. Plowright, Montana State University; Peter J. Hudson, Penn State University
 Shifting perspectives on host contact networks: From uniform, to heterogenous, and presently dynamic
Ian Carroll, Georgetown University; Shweta Bansal, Georgetown University
See more of: Ignite ESA Sessions