The dynamics of Land use and pathogens
As part of a large team of interdisciplinary scientists know as bat1health and led by Raina Plowright (Montana State University), The Bharti Lab works on understanding the mechanistic links between the environment, human behavior, and wildlife to characterize spillover events of henipaviruses. Within this large team, our lab works on Hendra virus in Australia.
1993-2013-2019: anthropogenic illumination shows signifiant increase across the east coast of Australia as human populations increase in distribution and abundance.
Human population growth, land development, and loss of native forests has displaced flying foxes (bats). We’re working to identify the critical areas and species of habitat loss for these flying foxes. We want to target those for preservation and restoration to help maintain the flying foxes’ important ecological services as pollinators. Since these flying foxes are the reservoir host for Hendra virus, we are also using this approach to draw the bats back into their native habitat to minimize their contact with competent hosts in the human environment. The end result would be a health improvement for the environment, the flying foxes, and the species that make up the human environment.
Flying fox winter vegetation loss from pre-clear (~1750) to 2017 in Queensland (Baranowski).
As part of this research, we’ve created a searchable database in R with openly available weather measurements from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (led by Lambert). Download the weather database here (1900-2019, over 150 million data points).
An orphaned baby black flying fox, Teven, receiving care and nutrition at a wildlife sanctuary.
Relevant papers
Baranowski, K., Bharti, N. (2023) Habitat Loss for Black Flying Foxes and Implications for Hendra virus. Landscape Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-023-01642-w
Faust, Christina; Castellanos, Adrian; Peel, Alison; Eby, Peggy; Plowright, Raina; Han, Barbara; Bharti, Nita. (2023) Environmental variation across disparate spatial scales and temporal lags influences Hendra virus spillover. Journal of Applied Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14415
Manuel Ruiz-Aravena*, Clifton McKee*, Amandine Gamble, Tamika Lunn, Aaron Morris, Celine E. Snedden, Claude Kwe Yinda, Julia R. Port, David William Buchholz, Yao Yu Yeo, Christina Faust, Elinor Jax, Lauren Dee, Devin Jones, Maureen Kessler, Caylee Falvo, Daniel Crowley, Nita Bharti, Cara E. Brook, Hector C. Aguilar, Alison J. Peel, Olivier Restif, Tony Schountz, Colin R. Parrish, Emily S. Gurley, James O. Lloyd-Smith, Peter Hudson, Vincent J. Munster, Raina K. Plowright. (2021) Ecology, evolution, and spillover of coronaviruses from bats. Nature Reviews Microbiology, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-021-00652-2 (*authors contributed equally)
Baranowski, K.*, Faust, C.*, Eby, P., Bharti, N. (2021) Quantifying the impacts of Australian bushfires on native forests and grey-headed flying foxes. Global Ecology and Conservation. (June 2021; e01566) (*authors contributed equally) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2021.e01566 (Pre-print of earlier version: DOI 10.21203/rs.3.rs-36234/v1)
Baranowski, K., Taylor, T., Lambert, B., Bharti, N. (2020) Application of Reflectance Ratios on High-Resolution Satellite Imagery to Remotely Identify Eucalypt Vegetation. Remote Sens. 12(24), 4079; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12244079
The team stands around while Liam gets beamed off the planet.
Liam, animated, explaining something. Perhaps his experience of being beamed off the planet.
A scientific meeting in a remarkable location and a unique building.
Funding sources for this work
NSF-NIH-NIFA EEID 2022-2027; PI: N. Bharti
DARPA PREEMPT 2018-2021; PI: R. Plowright
NSF CNH 2017-2022; PI: R. Plowright
NSF award DBI-1052875, September 2013-June 2015.
‘Land use change and infectious diseases,’ PIs: A. Dobson, N. Bharti, M. Bonds
National Socio-environment Synthesis Center (SESYNC, Annapolis MD) and National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA) joint working group venture.
NIH Fogarty International Center’s Research and Policy for Infectious Disease Dynamics (RAPIDD) workshop, 2014. ‘Environmental drivers of behavior and infectious disease,’ N. Bharti (PI), J. Jones. Held at Stanford University, Woods Institute for the Environment, April 28-30.