Identifying drivers of pathogen transmission within and among species

Pathogens and infectious diseases are important components of natural communities and have major impacts from food production to human health. How ecological and evolutionary processes drive or constraint pathogen transmission in free-ranging populations is not only an important fundamental question but can also provide lessons for infectious disease control. I will use examples from our work on rabies virus, a zoonotic pathogen maintained by wildlife and domestic dog reservoirs, to address this. Drawing on a combination of experimental, genomic, and spatio-temporal data, I will illustrate different approaches for gaining insights into drivers of cross-species transmission, geographic spread and persistence in free-ranging host populations. I will discuss the implications of this work for our understanding of pathogen emergence and how the effect of zoonotic diseases can be mitigated.

The seminar will be hosted using Zoom. A Google calendar invite featuring the Zoom link will be sent to Biology staff and students before the seminar date. For all enquiries please contact Biology DMT Hub.