CO-INFECTION

Causes and consequences of multiple infections in animal and human health

Research Pathway: Wildlife Health and Disease

RYC-2016-21120 «Ramón y Cajal Agreement», Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MINECO, Gobierno de España. Period: 2018-2022.

Our WE&H group joint an international (Australia, USA, UK, France) group or researchers focused on the improvement of methods for statistical modelling and of data from co-infection studies. Since February 2020, Dr. Alison Peel (Griffith University), is leading this promising initiative.

What are we doing…

“We will focus on community-level approaches to understand and predict parasite co-occurrence patterns. It will use diverse case studies across micro- and macro parasites (covering the participant’s extensive expertise) to synthesise approaches that are generalisable across multiple disciplines/systems”

Novel multiplexed laboratory assays are producing a rising tide of data on coinfection of individuals with multiple pathogens. The addition of powerful new analytical techniques that can infer co-infection patterns from observational data means that the time is right to bring together experts to synthesise and translate existing knowledge from community ecology to community disease ecology and set the future direction of this field—which constitute this working group aims.