Efficient wildlife disease control: From social network self-organization to optimal vaccination

• Peter D. Walsh

Abstract
As large vertebrates are restricted to ever smaller populations, the threat posed by infectious disease grows. This multidisciplinary working group will investigate how information on social network connectivity can be used to make wildlife disease control programs more efficient. Using primates as a model system, we will build from studies on the way in which memory-based cognitive skills drive social network self-organization to the modeling of optimal disease control. Our modeling will be strongly data-based, using large datasets on ranging and disease prevalence/mortality from gorillas, chimpanzees and four monkey species to parameterize and validate agent-based simulation models. The datasets are from primate species that both suffer disease spillover from humans (e.g. measles, yaws, gut parasites) and act as reservoir or intermediate hosts for viruses that are of high public health (HIV, yellow fever) or bioterror (anthrax, Ebola) importance. The group’s research will be focused on three overlapping topics. First, we will investigate how cognitive skills influence social network self-organization and interact with landscape processes such as habit degradation and hunting to determine patterns of disease emergence. Second, we will evaluate both generic strategies for controlling disease in protected areas and detailed case studies of optimal disease control in specific systems, including a special focus on controlling the impact of Ebola, which has killed about one third of the world’s protected area gorilla population over the last 15 years. Third, the group will perform cost-benefit analyses to evaluate the cost-effectiveness and feasibility of vaccination relative to other conservation strategies, as well as make recommendations on which steps need to be taken to streamline the movement of vaccines and treatments from laboratory development to field implementation. Working group products will include both basic research on the mechanisms of disease network self-organization and more applied work on optimal disease control in real systems. A large body of primary and derived data products will be deposited in publicly accessible databases. The group has excellent diversity and balance in terms of the scientific discipline, career stage, gender, and geographic origin of its participants.