Land use, Biodiversity and Rodent-borne diseases

• Applicants: Dr. Christian Imholt; Dr. Anne Mayer-Scholl; Dr. Anna Obiegala
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions ; Ecology of Land Use
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 433328097

Anthropogenic alterations to the environment negatively affect natural ecosystem integrity. In the process, shifted ecosystem properties have led to the disturbance of many fundamental ecosystem services. Recently, there has been increasing attention to the effect of habitat degradation on the emergence and expansion of infectious diseases in human and animals. Habitat degradation may alter host and vector abundance, diversity, community composition as well environmental conditions associated with disease transmission within the host/vector/pathogen-complex. In fact, pathogens with different routes of transmission might respond differently to similar changes in the environmental conditions while hosts can vary in competency which in combination with abundance likely influences pathogen transmission. There are very few experimental studies dealing with mechanisms of transmission of pathogens in response to different land use intensities. It is important to establish how the heterogeneity in life histories among and within hosts and vectors contributes to the persistence or absence of certain pathogens.Here we propose to evaluate how gradients in land use intensity can affect the transmission of pathogens differing in transmission route (direct/ vector) and host competency (multi-host). The study will focus on the small mammal community on grassland and forests, as they are hosts to a diverse range of pathogens and exhibit marked variation in abundance and community structure depending on local environmental conditions. Detailed information on land use intensity will be linked to small mammal and vector (e.g. ticks and ectoparasites) abundance, diversity and community composition. Trapped individuals will be screened for different pathogens. The infrastructure of the Biodiversity Exploratories allows for the incorporation of various important environmental factors that might be associated with disease transmission, like vegetation cover, food nutrition, soil type, etc. The results will highlight specific pathogen traits that are favored or disfavored by different forms of land use intensity. They will help improve disease prevention measures especially for high-risk occupations like forestry worker or farmers and will extend the relevance of the Biodiversity Exploratories into the public health domain.

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1374: Biodiversity Exploratories
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Rainer G. Ulrich