| Project duration: | 2015-2018 |
|---|---|
| Project status: | Active |
| Project leader: | dr Tomasz Podgórski (Mammal Research Institute PAS, Białowieża) |
| Project co-investigators: |
Dr Magdalena Niedziałkowska (Mammal Research Institute PAS, Białowieża) Dr hab. Krzysztof Śmietanka (National Veterinary Research Institute, Puławy) Dr Andrzej Kowalczyk (National Veterinary Research Institute, Puławy) Dr hab. Anna Radko (National Research Institute of Animal Production, Kraków) |
Project description:
Spatial and social behaviour of hosts can have profound effects on the patterns of pathogen spread and disease dynamics in wildlife populations. Understanding the mechanisms of this dynamics is a major challenge in management of the risks related to emerging diseases in livestock and humans. African swine fever (ASF) is a highly contagious, hemorrhagic viral disease which affects wild and domestic suids resulting in very high mortality among infected animals. In the absence of any vaccine or therapy, it represents a major threat to pig production sector, with potentially severe socio-economic consequences. Recent introduction of ASF into the Caucasus region in 2007, rapid spread across Eastern Europe, and entry to the European Union in 2014, has raised disease awareness and concerns about its further spread westward. The ecology and behavior of wild boar (Sus scrofa) – a group-living host of ASF virus in the wild – may facilitate disease expansion due to high mobility and sociality of the species and its abundance in Europe. Epidemiology of ASF in wild boar populations is largely unknown and the role of social and spatial population structure of the host in ASF dynamics in the wild has not been studied. Therefore, we urgently need to understand the influence of social and spatial behavior of the wild boar on the rate and spatial extent of disease spread. This is the main aim of this project. We collect data in the north-east Poland, where ASF has recently emerged, and apply methods of molecular ecology, population genetics, epidemiology, and GIS tools.
Specifically, we target the following research objectives:
- identify spatial, temporal, and demographic patterns of the ASF spread in the wild boar population and relate this patterns to host ecology, life-history, and population parameters;
- estimate the persistence of ASF virus in the host population in relation to landscape structure (habitat types, landscape heterogeneity, patch size);
- reconstruct social structure of the population based on genetic relatedness between individuals to infer disease transmission rates within and between wild boar social groups;
- determine genetic variation and structure of the population to identify origin of infected individuals and spatial patterns of disease spread.