NSF : Rabies could spread to Peru's coast by 2020 .- La rabia podría extenderse a costa de Perú en 2020

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=189583&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

Male vampire bats the likely culprits in transmitting the virus

A colony of vampire bats. Scientists are discovering new links between vampire bats and rabies. Credit and Larger Version

September 13, 2016

The following is part 19 in a series on the NSF-NIH-USDA Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) Program. See parts: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18.

Rabies will likely reach the Pacific Coast of Peru -- where the virus currently does not occur -- within four years, according to a paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers reported that the vector-borne virus, which is moving at a rate of 10 miles per year, is likely being carried by infected male vampire bats, and could arrive at the Peruvian coast by June 2020. Additional analyses showed that male bats, which leave their colonies upon reaching maturity, are using Andes Mountain corridors to carry the virus westward.

"Understanding what controls the spread of disease is more important than ever," said Sam Scheiner, director of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases Program, which funded the research. "This study demonstrates that modern genetic tools can measure that spread. In the future, such tools will be important in controlling known diseases, such as bat rabies, and new diseases as they emerge."

The findings could help public health officials in Peru and neighboring countries prepare for and mitigate future rabies outbreaks, said ecologist Sonia Altizer of the University of Georgia, a co-author of the paper.

Rabies is a serious threat to public health and agriculture in Latin America, causing human fatalities and more than $30 million in livestock losses every year.

Vampire bats are responsible for the majority of rabies cases in humans and in livestock, largely because of their blood-feeding behavior.

 

DNA shows viral lineage

 

Human and livestock deaths from rabies are on the rise, with rabies now appearing in what were previously virus-free areas. Current rabies control efforts, which focus on reducing the size of vampire bat populations, have proved ineffective.

Understanding how bat dispersal drives invasions of the virus is therefore critical for forecasting the virus's likely spread, and for developing strategies to stop it, scientists say.

Due to the logistical difficulty of tracking infected vampire bats in real-time, researchers sampled DNA from bats and from the rabies virus to explore historical patterns of the virus's spread.

Altizer and Daniel Streicker of the University of Glasgow analyzed the DNA in 264 samples of rabies virus obtained from infected livestock throughout Peru.

They found that the virus could be traced back to one of three common ancestors: two virus lineages that occurred east of the Andes, and a third virus lineage in the inter-Andean valleys to the south.

 

A culprit revealed

 

To analyze the DNA of vampire bats, the team took tissue samples from 468 bats. They then looked at two kinds of DNA: nuclear DNA, which is inherited from both parents, and mitochondrial DNA, inherited only from mothers.

Analyses of the maternally inherited DNA showed that most bat groups with a similar maternal lineage live exclusively in single geographic areas, suggesting that the females don't move among different areas.

The analyses of nuclear DNA told a different story, however.

The researchers found that bats with the same nuclear DNA signature were clustered into three geographic regions, and that the spatial distribution of these three DNA lineages was strikingly similar to the three genetic groups of the rabies virus.

"In a nutshell, this shows that male vampire bats are likely responsible for dispersing rabies across the landscape at the continent level," Altizer said.

"Genetic markers show high site fidelity in females, but not in males, and genetic structuring of bi-parentally inherited nuclear DNA of the bats closely matches the rabies virus genetic structuring, while the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA markers do not match at all."

By taking into account the collection dates of rabies virus samples, the researchers reconstructed the historical spread of the virus across the country. In combining this information with detailed maps of Peru's landscape, they were able to forecast likely future rabies invasions.

--	Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 cdybas@nsf.gov
--	Beth Gavrilles, UGA (706) 542-7247 bethgav@uga.edu

Investigators Daniel Becker
Robert Poulin
Sonia Altizer
Sonia Altizer
Alonso Aguirre
Katherine Smith
Daniel Streicker
Patrick Stephens
Related Institutions/Organizations University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc
Related Programs Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases
Related Awards #1316223 RCN Proposal: Macroecology of Infectious Disease
#1601052 DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Consequences of resource heterogeneity for immune defense, connectivity, and rabies dynamics in vampire bats
Total Grants $426,835
Related WebsitesNSF Special Report: Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/ecoinf/
To slow the spread of infectious diseases, NSF, NIH, USDA support new research: https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=136044
National Science Foundation awards $1.7 million in rapid response grants to study Zika virus: https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=138472

Vampire bats are carrying rabies across the Andes Mountains of Peru.
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Close-up of a vampire bat, named for its meals of blood.
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A vampire bat, shown here with researcher and glove, must be handled very carefully.
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This donkey shows signs of vampire bat bites.
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Rabies could reach Peru's Pacific Coast by the year 2020, helped along by male vampire bats.
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the National Science Foundation's (NSF)
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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nsf.gov - National Science Foundation - How evolutionary principles could help save our world

Battling modern threats to food, land and health with applied evolutionary biology

A Ethiopian child about to get her measles vaccination. Credit and Larger Version

September 11, 2014

The age of the Anthropocene--the scientific name given to our current geologic age--is dominated by human impacts on our environment. A warming climate. Increased resistance of pathogens and pests. A swelling population. Coping with these modern global challenges requires application of what one might call a more-ancient principle: evolution.

That's the recommendation of a diverse group of researchers, in a paper published today in the online version of the journal Science. A majority of the nine authors on the paper have received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

"Evolution isn't just about the past anymore, it's about the present and the future," said Scott Carroll, an evolutionary ecologist at University of California-Davis and one of the paper's authors. Addressing societal challenges--food security, emerging diseases, biodiversity loss--in a sustainable way is "going to require evolutionary thinking."

The paper reviews current uses of evolutionary biology and recommends specific ways the field can contribute to the international sustainable development goals (SDGs), now in development by the United Nations.

Evolutionary biology has "tremendous potential" to solve many of the issues highlighted in the SDGs, said Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, another Science author from the University of Copenhagen's Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate. The field accounts for how pests may adapt rapidly to our interventions and how vulnerable species struggle to adapt to global change. The authors even chose this release date to coincide with the upcoming meeting of the UN General Assembly, which starts September 24.

Their recommendations include gene therapies to treat disease, choosing drought-and-flood-resistant crop varieties and altering conservation strategies to protect land with high levels of genetic diversity.

"Many human-engineered solutions to societal problems have turned out to have a relatively short useful life because evolution finds ways around them," said George Gilchrist, program officer in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded many of the Science authors. "Carroll and colleagues propose turning the tables and using evolutionary processes to develop more robust and dynamic solutions."

Applied evolutionary biology just recently made the leap from an academic discipline to a more-practical one, spurred by an effort within the community to better synthesize and share research insights. And--above all--increasing environmental pressures.

"The fact that we're changing the world means that evolutionary processes are going to be affected," said Thomas Smith, of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and another Science author. The question is, according to Smith: Do we want to be engaged in this change, or not?

The paper also serves as a platform for establishing a cross-disciplinary field of applied evolutionary biology, Carroll said, and a way to promote the field as a path to sustainable development solutions.

"Evolutionary biology touches on many elements of the life sciences, from medicine to conservation biology to agriculture," said Smith. "And unfortunately, there hasn't been an effort to unify across these fields."

This disconnect exists despite the use of evolutionary tactics in many disciplines: treating HIV with a cocktail of drugs, for example, to slow pathogen resistance. And the effects of evolution already swirl in the public consciousness--and spark debate. Think of the arguments for and against genetically modified crops, or warnings about the increasing price of combating drug resistance (which costs more than $20 billion in the U.S. each year, according to the nonprofit Alliance for Prudent Use of Antibiotics).

Seldom are these issues described in an evolutionary context, said Smith. "We're missing an opportunity to educate the public about the importance of evolutionary principles in our daily lives."

In conservation, evolutionary approaches are often disregarded because of the belief that evolution is beyond our ability to manage and too slow to be useful, according to a paper Smith co-authored in the journal Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics (AREES).

That article, recently published online, also tackles applied evolution. It was co-authored by Carroll, University of Maine Biologist Michael Kinnison, Sharon Strauss--of the Department of Evolution and Ecology at University of California-Davis--and Trevon Fuller of UCLA's Tropical Research Institute. All are NSF-funded. Kinnison and Strauss are also co-authors on the Science paper.

Yet contemporary evolution--what scientists are observing now--happens on timescales of months to a few hundred years, and can influence conservation management outcomes, according to the AREES paper.

Considering the evolutionary potential and constraints of species is also essential to combat "evolutionary mismatch." This means the environment a species exists in, and the one it has evolved to exist in, no longer match.

Such disharmony can be "dire and costly," the authors write in Science, citing the increasingly sedentary lifestyles--and processed food diets--of modern humans. These lifestyles are linked with increasing rates of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disorders. Restoring our health requires greater physical activity and less refined carbohydrates: "Diets and activity levels closer to those of the past, to which we are better adapted," the Science paper said.

Implementing applied evolutionary principles often requires very careful thinking about social incentives, said Jørgensen. Public vaccination programs, for example, and pest control in crops often create tension between individual and public good.

Applied evolution, therefore, requires input from biologists, doctors, agriculturalists: "We're making a call for policy makers, decision-makers at all levels," to be involved, Jørgensen said.

Evolutionary biologists don't have all the answers, said Smith. And using applied evolution is not without risk. But we have reached a point "where we need to take risks in many cases," he said. "We can't just sit back and be overly conservative, or we're going to lose the game."

-NSF-

Media Contacts Jessica Arriens, NSF, (703) 292-2243, jarriens@nsf.gov

Related WebsitesLong-Term Investigation of Evolution in a Community Context:

 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0416326&HistoricalAwards=false
Evolution of persistence in the model bacterium, Sinorhizobium:

 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0918897&HistoricalAwards=false
Genetic and Host Plant Influences in Insect Population Differentiation:

 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9021106&HistoricalAwards=false
Genetic and Environmental Influences on Behavioral Flexibilty in an Insect:

 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9306818&HistoricalAwards=false
Suppression of rhizobial reproduction by legumes: Implications for mutualism:

 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0918986&HistoricalAwards=false
IGERT: Biological Invasions: From Genes to Ecosystems, From Science to Society:

 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0114432&HistoricalAwards=false
Adaptive Divergence Versus Gene Flow in the Wild: Evaluation in Trinidadian Guppy Populations:

 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0235605&HistoricalAwards=false
IGERT:REsponding to RApid Environmental CHange (REACH): From genes to ecosystems, science to society:

 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0801430&HistoricalAwards=false
PIRE: Mapping Evolutionary Process in the Face of Climate Change: An Integrated Approach to Education and Conservation Prioritization in Central Africa:

 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1243524&HistoricalAwards=false

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2014, its budget is $7.2 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 50,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $593 million in professional and service contracts yearly.
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A caterpillar of pink bollworm, which has evolved to resistance to genetically modified cotton.
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Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, or MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
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A killer whale viewed by child. Both animals are slow to evolve.
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The researchers' findings are described online in Science Sept. 11, 2014.
Credit and Larger Version
The National Science Foundation (NSF)
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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