Viral ecO-evOlutionary Dynamics of wild and domestic pOllinatOrs under global change

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Robert Paxton; Professor Dr. Josef Settele
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 428721090

Pollinators and pollination underpin ecosystem and human health but they face multiple threats from global change. Anthropogenic modification of landscape floral resources by land-use and alien species may nutritionally stress pollinators and alter their abundance and species interactions. This can magnify disease risk, especially from RNA viruses that, due to high mutation and recombination rates, rapidly adapt to environmental changes and novel hosts, often leading to emerging infectious diseases. However, major knowledge gaps exist on the potential for global change to drive virus host shifts and emergent pandemic viruses that could lead to managed and wild pollinator losses. Recent evidence suggests viral co-infection across a spectrum of pollinators. Nevertheless how global change pressures shape pollinator disease risk by modifying host nutrition, viral adaptation to alternative hosts, the buffering effects of species diversity and the role of particular species or habitats as transmission hubs, remains poorly understood. VOODOO aims to discover how the eco-epidemiological dynamics of plant-pollinator-virus interactions from individual to community levels are modulated by changes to the availability and quality of nutritional (floral) resources driven by intensive agriculture, alien plant species, and urbanisation. Using ecological sampling and high-resolution molecular analyses (quantitative and strand-specific PCR), we will quantify tripartite (plant-pollinator-virus) networks in different landscapes and use network and eco-epidemiological modelling to reveal disease hubs and dynamics across organisms and habitats. We will couple this with semi-field experiments examining transmission pathways and laboratory selection experiments (incorporating NGS) testing viral fitness/adaptation in known and alternative host species subjected to field-realistic nutritional stress treatments. We will engage with diverse societal actors to integrate complementary knowledge on decision-making for risk management and implementation to assure sustainable societal outcomes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, Poland, Switzerland
• Partner Organisation: Agence Nationale de la Recherche / The French National Research Agency; Narodowe Centrum Nauki (NCN); Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Matthias Albrecht; Dr. Anna Gajda; Professor Dr. Peter Neumann; Dr. Hajnalka Szentgyörgyi; Dr. Adam J. Vanbergen