2026-09-26T22:15:45Zhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/server/oai/requestoai:mro.massey.ac.nz:10179/157602026-08-31T01:06:01Zcom_10179_294col_10179_296
Massey Research Online
author
Hranac, Carter Reed
2020-11-03T02:17:15Z
2020-11-03T02:17:15Z
2019
http://hdl.handle.net/10179/15760
Q111965565
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q111965565
Emerging infectious diseases present significant threats to the health of humans and wildlife. The ecology of emerging infectious diseases is a data hungry field in a world of rare events. Bats are both the source of human pathogens globally and the victims of a novel fungal pathogen causing continent-wide population declines in North America. By using the principals of iterative model design and model guided field work I leverage the mechanistic relationships between seasonally limiting biotic and abiotic factors of wild bats to understand spatio-temporal disease emergence dynamics from and within bat populations.
I first use a novel ecological niche modeling technique to relate the seasonal availability of resources to predict African bat birthing events. I then use these model results to test hypotheses that Ebola virus disease (EVD) transmission to humans and non-reservoir animal hosts are related to the birthing events of bats through the use of a spatiotemporal Poisson point process model. The results suggest EVD emergence in Africa may be driven in part by the pattern of births among bats, especially fruit bats. Further, the identified temporal lag terms between bat birthing terms and EVD emergence are consistent with hypothesized viral dynamics in bat populations. Out of sample testing on the two most recent EVD outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reveal a high predictive model performance and suggest the existence of both strong regional seasonality and locations persistently at risk of EVD outbreaks in humans and susceptible wildlife.
Finally, I model North American winter duration and incorporate spatial variation in host traits related to body mass and composition to update survival estimates for hibernating 𝘔𝘺𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘶𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘶𝘨𝘶𝘴 infected with 𝘗𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘥𝘰𝘨𝘺𝘮𝘯𝘰𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘴, the causative agent of the emerging disease white-nose syndrome (WNS) killing bats in Eastern North American populations. Results indicate that hibernating 𝘔. 𝘭𝘶𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘶𝘨𝘶𝘴 in the West are likely to suffer populations declines similar to those observed in the East. All my findings will require further ground-truthing to validate the results, yet demonstrate the predictive power of identified mechanistic relationships on complex infectious disease systems.
en
The Author
Bats
Diseases
Bats as carriers of disease
Communicable diseases
Pteropodidae
Africa
Reproduction
Ebola virus disease
Congo (Democratic Republic)
Little brown bat
Hibernation
White-nose syndrome
North America
Mathematical models
Ecology of infectious diseases in wild bats : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Veterinary Sciences at Massey University, New Zealand
Thesis
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URL
https://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstreams/8b6ab80f-16a7-4bb6-92b7-659e95e1c212/download
File
MD5
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application/pdf
HranacPhDThesis.pdf
URL
https://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstreams/306d0640-b970-47a8-a80c-50b5c797f009/download
File
MD5
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text/plain
HranacPhDThesis.pdf.txt