
Research team conducting survey with Mandena resident, Mandena, Madagascar
Funding: National Institutes of Health, RO1
Years: 2019-2024
Charles Nunn (PI), Randy Kramer and James Moody (co-PIs)
This research will investigate how ecological changes in the land influence disease spread between species including humans. It will identify the disease transmission pathways by testing for the prevalence of disease and vectors in small mammals and humans. It will examine how these transmission pathways change with increasing land use by comparing the presence of species and zoonotic diseases on different types of land (intact forest, degraded and fragmented forest, agricultural fields, rice paddies and village households), and human activity on these types of land and their resulting exposure to disease carrying rodents. Furthermore, it will examine how socio-economic characteristics and human behaviors influence an individual’s risk of disease transmission and exposure within human social networks.
Social network surveys will be used to see how individuals’ places in the social networks are influenced by socioeconomic, behavioral, and demographic traits, and how these variables predict their sharing of pathogens with animals.
Individual GPS data from humans, and domesticated animals will be used to examine how humans and domesticated animals interact with each other and with different environments, and how these may expose them to transmission of disease.