RESEARCH

Zoonotic VBD are complex and often have multiple arthropod vectors and multiple vertebrate hosts that maintain and amplify the pathogen in the natural environment. Each these components have their own intrinsic population dynamics that are impacted by external environmental conditions, which makes capturing all of these factors within a modeling framework difficult.

As part of our ongoing work, we have been examining the spatiotemporal patterns of West Nile virus and eastern equine encephalitis virus seroconversion in a long running sentinel chicken program in Florida. The goal is to understand environmental correlations with system dynamics and to leverage these correlations to improve prediction of transmission hazard.

In order to do this, we digitized paper records of FDOH sentinel chicken records, which were housed in binders to assemble a data set to analyze, and we are using advanced spatiotemporal modeling approaches that can account for underlying spatiotemporal structure in system dynamics. These approaches are beneficial because they reduce Type I errors, but they can also capture underlying structure driving transmission activity, including from variables not included in the models. We can then use this information to improve predictive performance and to observe patterns in this structure to provide clues about additional factors that may be driving these systems. ​

​

This work has been funded under the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, as well as through University of Florida Research Opportunity Seed Fund.

​​​

Campbell LP, Guralnick RP, Giordano BV, Sallam MF, Bauer AM, Tavares Y, Allen JM, Efstathion C, Bartlett S, Wishard R, Xue RD. Spatiotemporal Modeling of Zoonotic Arbovirus Transmission in Northeastern Florida Using Sentinel Chicken Surveillance and Earth Observation Data. Remote Sensing. 2022 Jul 14;14(14):3388.

 ​​

Tavares Y, Day J, Giordano BV, Eastmond B, Burkett-Cadena N, Guralnick RP, Martin E, Campbell LP. Regional variation in the landscape ecology of West Nile virus sentinel chicken seroconversion in Florida. Plos one. 2024 Oct 25;19(10):e0305510.

​

​

​

Predicting the potential distribution of medically important vector species, hosts, and pathogens provides a valuable step toward understanding where pathogen transmission may occur. While informative, zoonotic arbovirus pathogens are nested within vector and host communities and require complex interactions for amplification in the natural environment. Quantifying and predicting landscape and climate effects on joint distributions of vectors, hosts, and pathogens provides a new avenue to investigate where and when potential transmission may occur and to predict how these distributions may change under changing environmental conditions. Outputs from these models can be used to inform veterinary and public health agencies, along with vector control districts, to help improve surveillance efforts.

As part of a UF Biodiversity Institute Seed Fund project and IFAS Early Career Research Fund, we examined effects of landscape composition on joint distributions of West Nile virus mosquito vectors in Manatee County, FL. 

​

Bauer AM, Guralnick RP, Whitehead SA, Barve N, Allen JM, Campbell LP. Land use predicts proportion of West Nile virus vector‐competent mosquitoes. Ecosphere. 2024 Feb;15(2):e4771.

​

Under same this umbrella, Amy Bauer (recent PhD graduate December 2024) has expanded on this work, using a trait-based approach to examine landscape and climate effects on West Nile virus vector competent + host use distributions in Florida. Through this work, Amy focused on traits to help disentangle enzootic and epizootic cycles and predict vector potential across landscapes.