Habitat Fragmentation and Infectious Disease Dynamics
The widespread anthropogenic degradation of wildlife habitats has been established as a force that alters pathogen dynamics and drives the emergence of infectious diseases. Because habitat fragmentation is an ongoing process and its effects are often not immediately observable, longitudinal studies are needed for capturing patterns in infectious disease dynamics over time.
I am applying a combination of viral metagenomics and 16S amplicon sequencing to test how pathogen communities vary between a large forest fragment and a small forest fragment in northern Belize across a period of three years, with focus on a diverse assemblage of Neotropical bats. My fieldwork takes place at the Lamanai Archeological Reserve (450 ha), and Ka’Kabish (45 ha) in the Orange Walk District. These sites were previously connected, but have been separated by land cleared for agriculture for about the last twenty years. As fewer species of bats are found to occur at Ka'Kabish compared to the Lamanai Archaeological Reserve, infectious disease dynamics may follow Dilution Theory, with fewer host species resulting in a higher disease risk. I am testing for differences between the pathogen richness and diversity between the two fragments, bats of different species, families, and dietary guilds. Additionally, I am investigating whether bats in the Lamanai Archeological Reserve are better able to clear infections compared to bats from Ka'Kabish using mark-recapture analysis. |