Grant: Alliance Grants

Mosquito-borne viruses impact human and wildlife health globally. There are multiple mosquito-borne viruses that circulate in Canada, including West Nile virus, Jamestown Canyon Virus, and snowshoe hare virus. Because the diseases resulting from these viruses are often asymptomatic in humans, our actual knowledge of their presence and abundance in Canada is limited. Recently, climate change has raised concerns about increasing prevalence of the virus leading to more disease transmission. For those that do develop symptoms, impacts can be severe leading to lifelong disability and in some cases death because there are no specific treatments or vaccines for these diseases. The costs associated with the treatment, surveillance, and control of these diseases can result in considerable financial strain on governments. Therefore, the goal of this research is to address knowledge gaps in the prevalence, amplification, and movement of these viruses using an integrated landscape genomic framework. Landscape genomics uses genetic data from species to identify what landscape features affect their movement. Our study will focus on the South Nation River Watershed in eastern Ontario. This region has been under study by the project collaborating agencies (Public Health Agency of Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada) since 2017. Preliminary data demonstrates the presence of these viruses in this region, which is composed of urban, agricultural, and natural environments making it an ideal location to examine how these different environments may contribute to viral movement. This integrated framework is well suited to examine these viruses because it can incorporate both reservoir hosts (mammals), and vector hosts (mosquitos) that can result in the movement of these viruses on the landscape. Our overall aim is to identify landscape-level factors that predict viral persistence and movement in natural, rural, and semi-urban localities, paving the way for focused mosquito-borne viral monitoring.